Purgatory
by wolfraven80
Summary: AxH, post-TAC When Artemis's past misdeeds come back to haunt him, he and Holly must embark on another dangerous mission. But with the Atlantis Complex, a hostile LEP, and some old foes to contend with, the odds are stacked against them.
1. The Nut

**Purgatory**

**Chapter One: The Nut**

The front entrance of Haven City's J. Argon Clinic was buzzing with reporters, their cameras trained on the gnome of the hour, Doctor Argon himself. Network News reporters jostled past the PPTV crews, vying for the best angle as the doctor took his place on the clinic's front steps for the weekly briefing. A scattering of LEP officers kept watch – there had already been two brawls between the various station staffers. One had begun when a burger from Spud's Spud Emporium – someone's midday snack – had gone flying into another reporter's camera lense, smudging it past repair. The injured party had announced that it was sabotage and a skirmish had started from there.

Some four years ago this same clinic had been the site of another media frenzy when Opal Koboi had been there. The clinic was now host to a new celebrity patient who, much like Opal herself, had spent his fair share of time as public enemy number one. Three months after his admittance to the clinic, interest in Artemis Fowl's case remained keen. After all, unlike Koboi he was not comatose, which made for much better footage.

"Good to see you all again," Argon greeted the assembled reporters. "I'm happy to report that Artemis is doing well this week and we're seeing some very nice results with the insulin shock therapy treatments."

"Have you got clips for us this week, doc?" one of the PPTV reporters called out. The others joined him in clamouring their agreement. Doctor Argon's video clips had been the highest rated thing on network television since the B'wa Kell trials.

Argon hummed and hawed for a moment but then typed a few commands into the computer clutched in his palm and called up a video file on the monitor set up to his right for the briefing. "I do have a _little_ something."

Artemis Fowl appeared on the screen. He was garbed not in his typical Armani suit, but in an ochre-coloured prison jumpsuit. He appeared to be in the clinic's common room. A gaunt pixie sat in a chair in one corner, rocking back and forth, drooling slightly while nearby an elf busied herself with an energetic game of cards with her three imaginary friends, all of whose cards she played in turn, smiling and nodding at each of them and laughing at their witty banter. As for Artemis, he was brandishing what appeared to be a pole made of five or six drinking straws glued together and was engaged in a lively duel with a sprite, similarly equipped and hovering two feet off the floor in order to be at an even level with him.

"On guard, my worthy foe!" shouted Artemis Fowl – or rather his alter ego Orion, who had become a great favourite among Haven City's viewing audience. Orion leaped forward with his sword of straws while his opponent parried, flitting away for a moment and diving towards Orion. Displaying excellent footwork, Orion managed to dance away from his opponent's attack and strike back at his foe so that the tip of the straw met with the fairy's chest. "You are vanquished!" he announced.

The tips of the sprite's wings drooped but he saluted with his straws and then retired to one of the common room chairs, where he proceeded to begin counting the tiles on the floor.

The camera swivelled towards the common room entrance and focussed on a figure dressed in a blue LEP uniform with captain's acorns on the lapels. Captain Holly short stared across the room, her brow crinkling into a frown. She groaned and looked like she was about to back out of the common room when Orion spotted her.

"Ah! My lady!" exclaimed Orion, bounding towards her with an air which would have been familiar to anyone who had ever been in the presence of a golden retriever. "How fare you on this gorgeous day?"

The captain's frown deepened into a scowl. "We're underground. There's no weather here. How can it be a gorgeous day?"

Orion beamed at her. "Why it is gorgeous, of course, due to your radiant presence. Would that I had the words to describe it."

Captain Short held her face in her hands and groaned.

The smile on Orion's face was well nigh beatific. "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May."

"I'm going to shake you, Orion, if you don't cut that out," snapped Captain Short.

Argon stopped the clip there and smiled contentedly; the crowd was in stitches. He waited for the laughter to die down before he spoke again. "As you can see, the alter ego Orion continues to play-act the role of noble hero in the tradition of Mud Man literature from the past millennia. While Artemis himself struggles to reconcile his guilt over his past crimes with his newfound attempts at heroic action, the conflict has moved him from stage one symptoms such as obsessions – which are easily controlled through a finely-tuned regiment of medication – to stage two. Notions of heroism, idealism, and moral goodness are intolerable to Artemis in the face of his own guilt. As a result they've been relegated to this secondary personality, a personalty which Artemis does not think highly of at all. That said, he's stable with the stage one and two symptoms and there's no sign of them worsening. Still, I think it's fair to say that we're making solid progress. I'm confident that we'll see a complete or nearly complete recovery given another year or two of intensive treatment."

Argon straightened and cast his gaze over the crowd of reporters. "Questions?" As the reporters proceeded to shout their questions, Argon drew in a long breath and smiled a smile of deep and utter satisfaction.

**ooo**

Though the Argon clinic's main entrance was currently swarming with media, its little used delivery entrance to one side of the building was quite free. While the video clip played for the assembled reporters, the same elf in the same blue uniform hovered by the service door, her features alternating between anger, affront, and abashment.

Holly had already had words with Trouble today before she'd left Police Plaza. When he saw this latest clip on the news... Well, she supposed she'd never really been a career officer anyway.

With a sigh, she flashed her identification and made her way into the clinic, navigating its halls with the ease that came of three and a half months of regular visits, mulling over Argon's briefing as she walked. He made it sound so simple, as if Artemis's recovery were a foregone conclusion.

Holly had done some research of her own on the Atlantis Complex. Argon had glossed over some details when he'd explained it to Artemis's family – perhaps because of the way Butler had been glowering down at him. The Atlantis Complex was treatable, curable even. However, in cases that went untreated, consequences were serious. The original personality could be completely and permanently submerged by an alter ego. In the final stage, even the alter ego could be swept away as the mind collapsed in on itself, leaving the sufferer comatose, a vegetable, the original personality irretrievable.

Giving herself a shake, Holly hit the open button to Artemis's room. It was not, however, Artemis whom she found there, but a certain Mud Person she'd not seen in several weeks.

"Hello there fairy-girl," Juliet greeted her. "I hear you're a big tv star now," she added with a nod towards a screen on the wall that was displaying a live feed of Argon's news briefing.

Holly groaned. "Once Artemis is better... I'm going to kill him."

Juliet appeared to consider this for a moment. "I'm not sure how well that'll go over with Dom. Maybe you could just shoot him again instead? He'd probably let you get away with that – since it's you and all."

A smile quirked Holly's lips. "I'll keep that in mind." And then, after a moment's hesitation, "So if you're here does that mean..."

Juliet nodded. "Yeah, Mrs. Fowl is here to visit Artemis again."

Until a few years ago no human had ever set foot in Haven City. And then Artemis and Butler had come along, but all they'd seen had been the inside of an interrogation room at Police Plaza when they'd been questioned regarding the B'wa Kell. Now it was a whole other matter.

When Artemis had come down with Atlanis Complex, Argon had been anxious to have him checked in to his clinic. Butler had then demanded that Angeline Fowl be allowed to visit her son who was, after all, a minor. And when Butler insisted, things happened. Trouble's condition, though, was that any Mud People admitted to Haven be sedated for the trip down and that they not be allowed outside of Argon's facility. Butler, Juliet, and Angeline, had all finally had to return to the surface once it was clear that Artemis's stay would be more than temporary, and Holly had had to promise to keep a close eye on him. Not that she would have done otherwise.

Holly ran her fingers through her hair, a habit she'd developed since growing her hair out from the crewcut she'd sported for so many years. "I'll come back later, then."

"After braving that hoard outside you're going to run away from Angeline?" There was a smirk on the girl's face, but before Holly had the chance to deliver a proper comeback Juliet added, "Besides she's not with Artemis now. She needed to freshen up after the trip. Come on."

Holly followed Juliet down the halls until they reached the clinic cafeteria. In theory it was reserved for staff members, a place for them to eat without having to worry about an irate patient insisting the kelp and nettle side dish resembled the image of King Frond. Today, however, the tables and chairs had been pushed to the sides of the room, leaving the middle area free for use as a makeshift exercise room. Butler's hulking form would have nearly reached the ceiling had he been standing straight, but at present he remained hunched over as he held a block of padding (possibly from one of the clinic's rooms) as an improvised punching bag. And there, standing before him, was a pale, ungainly young man in an ochre jumpsuit, attempting to strike the padding with his clenched fists.

Holly halted in the doorway, eyebrows raised. "Now there's something I thought I would never see. That's Orion I guess?"

"Guess wrong. That's Artemis. Dom told me he started doing some work in the dojo before he got sick."

"The... dojo?" Holly repeated. "But why? I mean after all these years..."

Juliet shrugged. "Probably the same reason any teenage boy goes to the gym." And then, when Holly stared blankly at her, "To impress a girl."

Holly's eyes shifted from Juliet to watch Artemis as he lunged towards the pad, almost tripping himself up as he did. She winced; his fist made contact but by the angle of his strike, she was almost certain that, had he been facing a real opponent, he would have broken his wrist. And possibly several fingers. Butler proceeded to correct him and encouraged him to try again.

"He's not very impressive, is he?" Holly said.

Juliet shrugged. "It's the thought that counts, right fairy-girl? Love the new hair by the way," she added before crossing the floor to go join her brother and his charge.

Artemis dabbed at the sweat on his brow with a handkerchief when he saw them approaching. "Ah Holly, I was hoping to see you today. I'm afraid I missed your visit yesterday."

She rolled her eyes. "Yes, I noticed."

"Doctor Argon wanted to do some work with Orion and proceeded with insulin shock therapy to bring him to the fore."

"Either that or he just wanted some good sound clips for his briefing," Juliet suggested.

Artemis appeared pained as he glanced at Juliet and then back to Holly, and she was once again torn between the desire to comfort him... and to shake him. He rubbed his as temples as if they ached and finally the former impulse won out. Holly squeezed his arm. "Just don't watch the evening newscasts for tonight, all right?"

"Butler," Artemis said, "would shooting me be an option? For the good of the many, you understand."

Butler appeared bemused at the question. "I'm afraid not. I'd never be able to work again once word got out."

"I suppose in that case I shall have to continue to endure this humiliation," Artemis said with a sigh.

Holly smiled and punched him in the arm. "It could be worse. They could have locked you up in the Deeps with Opal, you know. The clinic's a resort compared to that place." She was glad to see him attempting levity – that was a good sign. Some days he seemed so dispirited that she could not help but be anxious for him.

Artemis nodded. "I was hoping to speak to you about–"

"Oh Arty, there you are!"

The open space of the cafeteria gave Angeline's voice a tinny resonance. Holly sighed. It had been nice for a while there when Artemis's overanxious mother had returned to the surface to spend time with her husband and the twins. It had been quiet.

"I just got off my shift," Holly said. "I'm going to get something to eat. I'll catch up with you later when things have settled down."

And then she greeted Angeline politely and made her way out.

**ooo**

Some while later, after a meal at a nearby eatery that served very lovely chestnut and leek tarts, Holly made her way back to the clinic and slipped in the side entrance once again. This time when she arrived at Artemis's room, she found the door shut. She rapped on it and, tapping her foot on the floor, was waiting to be admitted when a voice came through the room's intercom. "I'm not decent."

"Artemis, I've seen you in your underwear before. Open up."

"Yes but... Oh very well."

The door slid open and Holly stared.

"Shut the door before anyone else sees me like this," Artemis snapped.

Unable to tear her eyes away from the spectacle before her, Holly reached backwards to hit the door's button. Fumbling for a moment, she finally heard it slide closed. "Artemis..."

"Yes," he said with a sigh. "I'm aware."

His legs were encased in dark blue denim, tailored to his measurements so as to be neither baggy nor too snug. His torso was covered by a brown T-shirt on which was a cartoonish image of a Mud Boy with no neck and three fingers on each hand. Scrawled across Artemis's collar bone in a neon green graffiti-style font was the word "Randomosity."

She had to bite her lip so as not to laugh. Artemis scowled. "My mother's birthday present, which she finally brought down to me. Apparently my regular attire is intimidating to other adolescents – particularly girls, I'm told – and my mother saw fit to remedy the situation."

Holly rolled her eyes. "Oh yes, you're much more approachable now. I'm sure the girls will be flocking to you. She even went to the trouble of coordinating with your eye colours," she added with a smirk.

Artemis's hand darted to his left cheekbone, just beneath the eye he had switched with Holly when they'd been in the time stream, leaving them each with a mismatched blue and hazel pair. "Yes, very thoughtful of her. I'm sure soon she'll be signing me up for hip hop dance lessons so I can have 'moves.'" His lip curled at the word.

At this a laugh did indeed escape Holly. Artemis glowered at her.

"I'm sure your mother means well, Arty. This is just her way of coping."

His shoulders slumped, sending a ripple through the cartoon boy on his shirt. "She would like us to be a normal family. Normal," he repeated, shaking his head. "That is something I will never be."

His arm was getting more and more difficult to reach what with his recent growth spurt so she reached out instead for his hand, squeezing his fingers. "Right now, all you need to do is work on being healthy again."

"Yes. Healthy. Of course." He flopped down onto the hospital bed, which was the only fixture in the room apart from a bedside table and one chair, and glared at the pulsing mood lights on the floor. The screen, originally used to display Opal's vital signs when this had been her room, was off and she dearly hoped Artemis had not seen the endless replays of Orion's latest antics.

As she perched on the chair next to the bed, she noted the objects on his bedside table. A collection of books, miniature computer, and cell phone had been ordered from largest to smallest and set equidistant from each other and aligned with the edges of the table. "I was feeling a bit uneasy earlier," he explained when he noticed the direction of her gaze. "Just before my medication was to be administered. I'm fine now." And to make his point he reached for one of the objects and removed it, thus breaking the painstakingly created grid. He held it up for her to see, a sleek black phone with a very large screen. "I decided to take a preemptive approach and make a specific request for my Christmas present. It's not the equal of my customized phone, of course, but it's sufficiently trendy, what with that new videoconferencing capabilities, that it was enough of a request to satisfy my mother."

Holly nodded. "Your mother came by to deliver your present?"

"Yes. Since I won't be able to spend the holidays with my family, this is our early Christmas."

"Your father still thinks you're in Switzerland?"

"He does. I spoke to him only a few days ago."

"We've got Solstice coming up tomorrow so I expect things will be busy. I may not be able to drop by for a few days. There are always fairies who manage to sneak to the surface and get into trouble on holidays."

"In that case, I'd like to show you something while you're here." He reached over to the table to retrieve what looked very much like a ballpoint pen.

"A primitive writing tool?"

"Yes, Holly, by all means, mock the madman. He's certainly deserving of your scorn."

She snorted. "Come off it, Artemis. No pity from me until I can visit you without being ambushed by Orion."

"Very well. I asked Butler to bring it for me. This," he said holding up the pen – but he got no further than that before the door slid open and a hairy creature with tombstone teeth sauntered into the room as if it were his own apartment.

"Hello there," Mulch greeted them. "Sorry to barge in on your alone time together."

"_Mulch_," Holly said in a tone that quickly made Mulch turn his attention to Artemis.

"Nice outfit. Planning to start a band? Artemis and the nutters?"

"More mockery," Artemis sighed. "Just what a recovering mental patient needs."

"Recovering. Of course, silly me. Been giving Argon some trouble, though, haven't you? You know I hear you're a tough nut to crack."

"It's been over three months. Will you never let that go?"

Mulch flashed a grin that showed off his overlarge teeth to good effect. "When I have such good material?"

Artemis straightened. "I would like to see _you_ attempt to outwit a giant squid in his own lair while simultaneously struggling with an obsessive compulsive disorder."

"I'm sure I'd just _crack_ under the pressure."

"Mulch, cut it out," Holly jumped in. "And Artemis, stop acting your age, would you?"

"It's quite all right," Artemis said, slumping back against his pillows. "I've come to accept that I am in purgatory, burning off the taint of my past crimes. I'm sure all this will come to an end. Eventually."

The despondency that crept into his tone on that last word made Holly want to cradle his face in her hands, look into those mismatched eyes, the twin to her own, and assure him that it would be all right. But with Mulch there this would only entail more teasing, and besides that Artemis had developed a habit of shrugging off words of comfort, as if he did not want them... or felt he did not deserve them.

His shiny new Christmas present cut through the silence with an incongruously cheerful ringtone. Artemis grimaced and answered, holding the phone away from himself as it indicated there was a video signal along with the audio.

Artemis's eyes widened as the screen lit up to display the image of the caller, and the word that fell from his lips chilled Holly's blood. "Kong."


	2. Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot?

**Chapter Two: Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot?**

"Hello, kid," said Billy Kong, smirking at the screen of his laptop, a pair of designer sunglasses hiding his eyes. "Remember me?"

"You're a difficult man to forget," Artemis said cooly. Kong still had the same spiked, highlighted hair, but his face looked thinner than it had three years ago when they had faced off in Taiwan – or three years ago for Kong anyway; it had been only a matter of months for Artemis.

"I bet you're wondering how I got this number." Kong did not bother to mask his smugness; it radiated from his every pore. "Nowadays, I'm the one with a friend who knows all the numbers."

"You have a friend? How lovely for you," Artemis replied, voice dripping sarcasm. "Now, why are you calling me? The last I heard you were serving a life sentence."

"That's been... renegotiated. And since I'm a free man again I thought maybe we could do a trade. For old time's sake."

Artemis arched a brow. "I don't believe you have anything that I'd want."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that, Fowl."

A queasy feeling began to creep into Artemis's stomach. He was normally equipped to handle these sorts of situations, but with his regiment of psychoactive drugs his system was somewhat less stable than it had been only months ago. A case of nerves could bring on the worst of his symptoms in spite of the medication. He took a deep breath. "Oh?"

"Let me ask you, kid, are you and your family tight?"

Artemis' voice was like an arctic wind. "I'm afraid I'm still waiting for you to make your point. I trust that there is one."

"Just wondering what you'd be willing to give up... for your brothers."

_Twelve words. Four for each brother._

Artemis swallowed, his throat dry, and took a moment to steady himself before the syndrome could take over. Yet at the back of his mind he could feel that trio of fours weaving a net of death in which to catch him and his siblings.

"What have you done, Kong?"

Kong smirked. "Nothing yet." And then after a slight pause, "Well nothing much." He tapped at the keys on his laptop and the image switched to focus on a pair of toddlers with blond curls, both sound asleep. But there was no doubt that it was Myles and Beckett Fowl. "Had to sedate them – they were causing a ruckus. One of the little monsters bit me," Kong added, raising his hand to show off a red, crescent-shaped welt.

"What is it you want, Kong?" Artemis said very quietly. At the back of his thoughts, the Atlantis Complex roiled._ Three times four is death, death, death._

"Like I said, kid, a little trade. After all, the bond between brothers is sacred, isn't it? And an elder brother's got to look out for his younger siblings. In fact he'd do anything to protect his younger brother, wouldn't he?"

Artemis strained to keep his expression neutral. He didn't doubt that behind those glasses Kong's eyes shone with madness. Kong still believed that the fairies were responsible for the murder of his elder brother Eric.

"You're awfully quiet, Fowl. Maybe you think I'm bluffing. You're telling yourself that even Billy King wouldn't hurt a couple of toddlers. Well let me tell you, I'm not picky. And someone who isn't willing to take care of his younger brothers maybe doesn't deserve to have them."

Artemis's eyes darted sideways for a moment to where Holly remained perched on the edge of her chair, listening intently while keeping out of sight. His intellect, fighting through the web of fours, grasped at the scattered pieces of the situation, assembling them like broken mirror shards until he could make out an image amid the disparate fragments.

_No, please no..._

He knew what Kong wanted.

"But maybe I'm doing you a favour. After all, anything happens to these two and you go back to being an only child and get the family fortune to yourself. Is that about right, Fowl?"

"What are you terms, Kong?"

"Something of equal value. I want that demon, the one from the Paradizo estate who was working for you. The female."

"Impossible. As I told you last time, she was released."

"I'm not through yet," Kong snapped. "I also want you. Equal trade, Fowl. Two for two."

"These terms are absurd. As I've told you, I cannot deliver to you the creature you've requested."

A smile like a lion baring its fangs, lit up Kong's face. "Oh I think you can. And then you're going to meet me... _there_."

A ping sounded from the phone as it received a text message. Artemis glanced at it, brows creasing ever so slightly as he recognised the GPS coordinates. "You've made your demands, Kong. It's I who now chooses the location for the trade."

"I don't think so. See the way I figure things, you want what I have _more_ than I want what you've got. And while I'm at it..." He titled his laptop so that the image showed a street sign viewed through the windshield of a vehicle. Artemis recognised it instantly. Dublin. "I thought I'd save you the trouble of tracking the call. I'll be moving along in a minute. It's a big city, though, so I don't think we'll be seeing each other before the meet up. Especially when you have to get all the way here. _With_ the female." He paused to glance at his watch. "I'm expecting you in eight hours. If you're not there by then you're an only child again and I send the proof direct to your estate." Kong flashed a smile. "Nice shirt."

The signal went dead.

With fingers that had gone almost numb, Artemis dialled the number of the twins' nanny. He let it ring exactly twenty-five times before he hung up. "My father is in London so the twins were staying with the nanny until tomorrow. That was the emergency number. If she's not picking up then it's certain that something has happened." He could not bring himself to look at Holly even as she took his hand in both of hers. "This is a disaster," he breathed.

"We've dealt with the likes of Kong before," Holly said, her voice firm. "We'll get them back."

"No," Artemis said, shaking his head, "you don't understand. He _knows_, Holly. The location for the meeting is..."

Holly reached for his phone and, after fiddling with it for a moment, pulled up the message from Kong. Her eyes widened. "How is this possible? That's the site southeast of Tara where we first met."

A dry laugh escaped Artemis's throat. "You mean where I abducted you."

"Semantics," Holly replied, waving a hand dismissively. "But how could Kong know about that? It can't be a coincidence. And why Ireland in the first place? It's like handing you the home turf advantage."

"We're being bated. Kong was all too willing to reveal his location, which means that the twins are being held at a secondary site and that he has accomplices. The choice for our meeting almost certainly means that a fairy is involved. My first guess would of course be Opal Koboi."

"You know, your first guess was wrong last time," Mulch pointed out.

Artemis raised an eyebrow. "If you know of any other fairies who have a personal vendetta against me then by all means, enlighten me."

"The personal touches would be just like Opal," Holly said, "And there's still one of her running loose. We need to talk to the commander."

Holly retrieved her helmet and slipped it onto her head. "Foaly, I know you're still at Police Plaza. And I know you're still monitoring Artemis's communications."

No sooner had Holly spoken than Foaly's image appeared on the flat screen across from Artemis's bed. "I heard the whole thing. And I got the coordinates. Just been playing back the message for the commander. I'll put him through to you in a minute."

Holly edged closer to Artemis so that they would both be visible. He noted, though, that Mulch had positioned himself against the wall that the screen was on, out of the LEP's view. Old habits died hard, it seemed.

When the image switched to split screen display, Commander Trouble Kelp did not appear especially cheerful. But then Artemis didn't believe he'd ever found the commander very pleased to see him. It was when Trouble's lips twitched that Artemis realized he was still wearing his absurd birthday present. He straightened, imagining himself in a suit and tie. "Commander, I'm sure you can see from Kong's choice of location that we're dealing with someone who has considerable knowledge of the fairy people and my history with them. That being the case I trust I can count on LEP assistance in this matter."

"No, Fowl, you can't. I'm not about to hand over one of my officers and risk exposing the People for your sake."

"But, Commander–" Holly jumped in.

"I don't believe I asked for your input, Captain," Trouble cut across her.

Artemis levelled his gaze at the screen. "You would leave my brothers to be killed by that man? I have no doubt that he will do as he says."

"Humans die all the time, Fowl, and it's none of our affair."

"And are they normally killed by fairies and fairy plots? Is it still none of your affair then?" Artemis shot back.

Trouble jabbed a finger at the screen. "You'd say anything to force us to get involved. Unless you've got proof that Koboi's responsible for this mess, I'm not playing your little games."

"You're making a serious mistake, Commander."

Trouble's complexion was taking on a purplish hue, reminiscent of his predecessor Julius Root. "You want to talk about mistakes? Whose fault is it that Koboi is on the loose anyway?"

"Commander," Holly began again, "whether or not Opal Koboi is involved, _we_ are responsible for Billy Kong. He saw me and he saw No 1. By all rights he should have been wiped clean, maybe even relocated. Instead, his memories were left intact because Ark Sool was in charge of the LEP at the time. With respect, Commander, this is the LEP's mess."

"It's our mess, is it?" His dark hair was slightly mussed, and his blue uniform rumpled after long hours at his desk, but if anything this only had the effect of making him seem _more_ threatening as he leaned over his desk towards the screen. "Captain, we're going to have a little chat tomorrow in my office. Is that clear?"

"Crystal, sir." Artemis darted a glance at Holly. He had heard that tone before, usually just before something exploded.

Trouble turned his attention back to Artemis. "You're still under Doctor Argon's care and confined to the clinic for treatment. I suggest if you want to see your siblings again you contact a human police agency rather than expecting the People to solve all your problems for you."

He didn't wait for Artemis's reply before terminating the call. Foaly opened his mouth to speak but before he got so much as a word out, Trouble's voice came through the intercom. "Foaly. My office. Now."

Foaly offered them an apologetic shrug and then he was gone.

"D'Arvit!" Holly growled, slamming her fist into her open palm.

A cold sweat prickled Artemis's skin. _Foaly. My office. Now._ Fours again. They surrounded him, a death knell for his brothers. He could feel the net growing tighter, squeezing around his thoughts, forcing out the cool, logical thinking he needed in order to formulate a plan. Eight hours. Four and Four. Again. Death for both his brothers if he did not act. Or death for himself and Holly if he did.

The phone was in his hand once more and, almost against his will it seemed, he found himself flipping it open and closed again and again. Holly let him get to five before she placed her hand over his, stopping his fidgeting. He caught her eye. Kong did not know what he was asking.

"Holly."

"It's not settled yet. We still have time."

They spun as the door slid open and one of the orderlies, a heavyset sprite whose expression suggested that the world as a whole had offended her in the most severe way, stormed into the room. "Out of the way," she said as she snagged Artemis's arm from Holly's grasp and proceeded to jab him with the hypershot used to deliver his medication.

Artemis winced and rubbed his arm once the orderly had released it. "I didn't believe I was due for another dose for several more hours."

"Doctor Argon was monitoring your readings and noticed they were getting erratic. This will calm you down."

Horror washed over Artemis like an icy breaker. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and got to his feet. His knees already felt weak. "You added a sedative to my medication."

"Get back in bed," the orderly commanded and it was clear that she was not someone whose commands were normally ignored.

"There's no time for this," Artemis said. "My brothers are..." But his thoughts were growing muzzy, his vision, blurred. He staggered and reached out for the bed railing to steady himself. Holly had moved next to him and was gripping his arm. His eyes fixed on her. "Holly," he said, his tone pleading. He wanted to say more but that was all he could manage before the world dimmed before his sight.


	3. Turnaround is Fairy Play

**Chapter Three: Turnaround is Fairy Play**

"D'Arvit!" Holly growled as Artemis pitched forward, collapsing onto her. She staggered under his weight but managed to catch him before he hit the floor. He was not as light as he used to be.

It took her a moment to place the sound she was hearing but when she did, she found herself feeling more irked than ever, which was no mean feat under the circumstances. "Having a good laugh, Mulch?" she said through gritted teeth as she laid Artemis's limp body down onto the floor. The pulsing gold mood lights gave his pallor a sickly hue.

"Guess Orion isn't the only one who's fallen for you," Mulch said with a snicker.

Holly glowered. "Why don't you make yourself useful and help me get him to bed?"

"So the feeling's mutual then?"

"Mulch, so help me if you don't shut it right now..."

The orderly had removed a portable hover-stretcher from her belt kit and set it on the floor next to Artemis. "Never mind," Holly snapped at the orderly. "I'll take care of him myself."

The orderly raised a disdainful eyebrow. "If you insist, Miss Short, then gods forbid I should interfere. I'm just here to do my job after all." And, with yet one more offence to add to her list, she stalked out of the room.

Holly glowered after her for a moment and then proceeded to grab Artemis under the armpits and drag him. "I can't believe Trouble refused to help," she snarled as she heaved his limp form onto the stretcher. "After everything Artemis has done for the People."

"There's also the small matter of everything he's done _to_ the People," Mulch said. "That might weigh in against him. Just a thought."

"That was a long time ago," Holly said quietly. For a moment her eyes lingered on Artemis's face. It was not the face of the child who'd confronted her beneath the oak tree, all hard lines and angles like a bird of prey, but neither was it the slightly scruffy young man from their travels to the past, long-haired and bristly. He was in between now. Not her enemy and not...

Holly shook herself and pushed the button on the hover-stretcher. It came to life with a soft hiss, rising to hover two feet off the floor. It had been made to suit fairy proportions, though, and Artemis's long limbs dangled over the edge. She stared at the hover-stretcher a moment as her thoughts began to coalesce into a course of action.

"Holly?" Mulch said.

"Hmm?"

"You have that look on your face."

"What look?"

"The look you get when you're about to do something stupid or something dangerous. Or both most likely."

She turned her full attention to Mulch. "How's Diggums and Day getting along?" she inquired, speaking of the private investigation business Mulch still operated with his fellow reformed felon Doodah Day.

"Business is booming. Why?" he asked, clearly suspicious.

"I need you to do a job for me." She made a point of looking straight at him as she spoke. "I was thinking... there's a lot of lax security in the sector. The LEP should work on tightening that up. Maybe you could have a look around and identify any useable shuttles that might be too easy for someone to borrow without authorization. Especially the kind that wouldn't be missed until a few hours later."

Mulch scratched at his scraggly beard. "All right," he said after a minute's deliberation. "Since it's you I suppose I could take on the extra work."

Holly smiled. "Thank you, Mulch."

He moved towards the doorway. "I guess I'll be on my way then, get an early start on the job. Take care of Mud Boy. I'll give you an update as soon as I can."

And then he was gone and she was alone with Artemis's unconscious form. Wasting no time, she retrieved a sheet of camfoil from her belt pouch and spread it over him, careful to tuck it in so that the entire stretcher was rendered invisible to the naked eye. She then hooked a piton to it, ensuring that a corner of the foil covered the cord attaching the stretcher to her belt.

Holly spared a moment to glance over her shoulder and double check that nothing was poking out from under the camfoil. She heaved a sigh. "You're going to owe me for this, Arty," she said to the empty space behind her before squaring her shoulders and marching out of the room, stretcher in tow.

**ooo**

Holly had only taken a few steps down the hall, stretcher hovering soundlessly behind her, when Doctor Argon turned the corner and began shambling in her direction.

Holly stifled a groan. _Oh no._

She quickly decided upon the same strategy that she'd used on the orderly and scowled at Argon, arms crossed over her chest, putting all her effort into looking as cross as possible. Which was not all that difficult when she considered whose fault it was that she had to drag Artemis's carcass around like so much deadweight.

"Oh, hello there, Captain Short," Argon greeted her, his voice just the slightest bit unsteady. "How's our favourite patient?"

"Out like a light. Was that really necessary?"

Argon straightened and tugged at his lab coat. "I'm afraid it was. The sort of agitation Artemis was experiencing will only worsen his symptoms. He'll be much better after a good night's rest."

"Agitation?" Holly repeated, dumbfounded by Argon's quite astounding obtuseness. "He has a family crisis to deal with and now he won't even be able to inform the people who need to know what's happened."

Argon tutted and put on an air of calm professionalism, the sort of doctor-knows-best look that made her want to grab him by the lapels and shake him. "I'm sure everything will get sorted out in short order. Artemis is ill and in no position to deal with a crisis in any case." His eyes darted over her shoulder and she huffed, drawing his attention back to her. She certainly did not want him going in there now only to find an empty bed where his most lucrative patient should be. "You said he was sleeping?"

"Like the dead," Holly said flatly.

"Well I suppose I won't need to check in on him tonight in that case. What about you, Captain?"

"What about me?"

"How are you handling things? Having a friend in the hospital is a major stressor. Not to mention the pressures due to Orion's apparent fixation on you as the damsel in his heroic fantasies."

Holly stood ramrod straight, trying with all her might to ignore the heat rising in her cheeks. He had said _heroic_ fantasies, hadn't he? Not... "I'm doing just fine, Doctor."

Argon apparently did not pick up on the finality of her tone because he barrelled on regardless. "Because I'd be happy to lend a professional ear if you'd like to discuss the matter. My door's always open for you, Captain."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"Or if you need a happy-shot I'd be glad to prescribe that as well. You really do look very tense, if I may be frank."

"It's been a long day."

Argon bobbed his head. "Yes, yes, of course. Well I won't keep you any longer then. Goodnight, Captain."

"Doctor," she replied tersely, willing him to waddle down the hall.

Finally he did turn and leave. She waited until he'd shambled around the corner before letting out the breath she'd been holding. Why am I doing this, Holly wondered as she made her way down the corridor. She was removing a patient from a mental ward, an act that was not only illegal, but also morally questionable what with Artemis's fragile mental state. But then she recalled the sight of Myles and Beckett, curled up asleep on a concrete floor, and the desperate look on Artemis's face before he'd collapsed.

"You still haven't burned off all that bad karma, Arty," she murmured.

If she could have made her way straight to the side entrance and been free of the clinic she'd have been very pleased. However, if Artemis was to function enough to be of any use in this operation, he would need his meds, which left Holly with the unenviable task of acquiring them from the clinic's pharmacy.

At this time in the evening, the clinic was quiet. A few orderlies made their way along the halls and the custodians performed their cleaning duties, but all the doctors, save for Argon himself, had quitted the clinic for the day, as had most of the visitors. Holly only prayed she didn't run into Butler or Juliet – or worse yet, Angeline. As much as she'd appreciate help, she knew she could never smuggle one of the Butlers out of Haven, not on her own anyway.

She knew where the clinic pharmacy was located and, as she made her way there, she debated on whether or not she should call in Foaly's help to circumvent the locking mechanism. She didn't want to drag her friend into trouble with her, but she didn't think her LEP credentials would get her past that lock. She was hovering before the door, weighing her options when she heard heavy footsteps approaching. Before the person could turn the corner Holly began to vibrate her molecules out of the visible spectrum, shielding so as to be as invisible to the eye as the stretcher behind her.

Holly stifled a groan as the orderly who had drugged Artemis a scant half hour ago stalked into view. The sprite punched in a code and the pharmacy door slid open. Holly seized the opportunity and followed hot on her heels. The orderly was far too intent on her own troubles to notice the delay before the door slid shut behind her.

The pharmacy was only slightly larger than a storage closet and Holly was forced to retreat against the back wall as the orderly opened a refrigerator unit where they kept the pre-made doses for their regular patients. The sprite backed up a step and then turned to access a computer terminal. Holly jerked back, tugging the stretcher along with her, but when a jolt rattled through her she realized the hover-stretcher had caught on something. Eyes scanning over the area where she _thought_ the stretcher was, Holly tried to figure out what had caused the snag. There. A spare set of electroshock therapy units. She groped around the units, pulling the cord free as the sprite continued to tap on her virtual keyboard, making notes about her nightly rounds. She was lucky it hadn't been the foil that had snagged or this little excursion might have come to a premature end.

As the sprite moved again, Holly grabbed the invisible stretcher with her invisible hands and pulled it against her, squeezing as close to the wall as she could. Even through the vibrating of her molecules she thought she could feel the thrum of Artemis's heartbeat. It took all her concentration to keep her breathing quiet and steady as she kept herself shielded.

The heavyset orderly moved to the pharmacy freezing unit again, opening the door wide and then stepping back to peer into it, bumping into the stretcher as she did. Holly bit down on her lip so as not to make a sound as the sprite's plump backside pushed the stretcher into her gut. A colourful string of curses came to mind but since Holly was in no position to speak, not one passed her lips. Which was probably for the best. Finally the orderly finished gazing into the freezing unit and, having picked out the dose she needed, shut it once more and the made her way out of the pharmacy.

Holly breathed a sigh of relief, rubbing her bruised middle, and then proceeded to the freezing unit herself. She found Artemis's prescription easily; the hypershots were larger than the norm to compensate for his greater body weight. She stuffed a handful of them into her pocket and then headed back out into the hallway, dropping her shield when she found it empty.

It wasn't until she reached the side door and was two blocks away from the clinic that she felt the first smidgen of relief. After that it was a waiting game as she found a quiet alley in which to park the stretcher until Mulch called her. When he did, he insisted on meeting face to face.

"So?" she said when he finally arrived. "How do things look?"

"You should tell that commander of yours to take better care of his equipment," Mulch replied, straightfaced. "Otherwise somebody's just gonna walk off with it one day."

"Well we can't have that. Give me the details and I'll send in a report."

He did. After that he reached out to shake her hand and she felt something cool and metallic against her palm. "Good luck, Holly," he said, more seriously than was normal for him as he slipped a shuttle's starter chip into her palm.

"Thanks."

When he was gone, she glanced down at the starter chip in her hand. She stared at it for a moment as it dawned on her just what shuttle she was about to hijack. A wicked smile spread onto her lips. "Perfect."


	4. Grand Theft Aerial

**Chapter Four: Grand Theft Aerial**

Feet up on a coffee table, leaning back into the waiting room chair, Corporal Grub Kelp adjusted the vid goggles over his eyes. He peeked out from under them, staring through the viewing window into the long tunnel where a LEPRecon shuttle was being washed, shined, and buffed by a series of foam scrubbers.

"Yep, the shuttle's still there," he mumbled and replaced the goggles over his eyes. The shuttle's interior had already been cleaned. It had taken five runs through the upholstery cycle to get the smell of dwarf gas out of the interior. Normally cleaning was handled in the LEP shuttle bays but the shuttle had been in such an odiferous state that a specialized cleaning facility had been deemed necessary. Grub harrumphed to himself. "Wasn't my fault that dwarf got all uppity when I arrested him. And Trubs did say I could use his shuttle for the mission."

With a sigh, Grub returned his attention to his goggles. The movie was a thriller about a pair of brothers who worked as private detectives in Atlantis, but Grub was having difficulty focussing on the story in spite of the all the juicy shootouts and shuttle chases. The elder of the pair kept picking on the younger one, who was clearly the smarter and better looking of the two.

"Don't come back until the shuttle's as a clean as a blue rinse."

Those had been Trouble's exact words. Now a blue rinse was, of course, a special fairy technology used on very rare occasion to destroy all living matter in a specific area without harming the location itself. A slightly less deadly version had been proposed to clean out Haven's sweartoad infestation but had been banned as inhumane and wasteful: after all sweartoads had come to be considered a delicacy among dwarves and certain pixies.

Grub turned up the sound of his movie to drown out the whirr of the high-pressure foam sprays in the cleaning bay. He was going to tell Mum all about this later. Trouble was just being ill-tempered and Grub did not enjoy being on the receiving end of it. After all it wasn't _his_ fault that Captain Short didn't have time for Trubs these days what with her running off to the Argon clinic all the time to visit Artemis Fowl. And it certainly wasn't his fault that Artemis Fowl was in Haven. So why should he bear the brunt of Trouble's temper?

His shift was supposed to have ended hours ago but instead here he was! Grub had to keep tapping his foot just to keep the motion-controlled lights in the waiting room from shutting off. Even the janitor had left. Or he thought it had been the janitor. He hadn't gotten a good look, but the fellow had been pushing a cleaning cart when he'd bumped into Grub and muttered an "Excuse me," and a "Sorry, sir."

"At least I've got a movie," he sighed to himself. The younger one really was the hero of the story. It was so obvious. Why wasn't he getting more screen time? Or the girl for that matter? With a sigh, Grub sank back into the waiting room chair and settled in for the second half of the film.

After a huge shootout and a touching reconciliation between the brothers, the movie's credits began to roll and Grub tugged off the goggles. The cleaning bay was empty which meant that the scrubbing was complete and the shuttle should be back in the pickup room. _Finally._

He patted his pockets as he walked, wondering idly what he'd done with the starter chip, but when he reached the pickup room, he found an empty shuttlebay. Puzzled he glanced back towards the cleaning bay doors, but everything was still. He looked again around the pickup room and it was then that he noticed something on the floor. A digipad. Grub leaned down and read the Gnommish script.

"This vehicle has been commandeered by the LEPRecon. It will be returned to you in its original state or, if not possible, you will be compensated for any loss or damages." This note was followed by an authorization seal.

Grub Kelp groaned. Trubs would never let him hear the end of this.

**ooo**

Apparently Mulch's pickpocketing skills were still top notch and, with the shuttle starter chip in her hand, it had been a simple matter for Holly to walk right into the cleaning facility and drive off with the vehicle the moment it was returned to the pickup room. Poor Grub wouldn't ever know what happened until he was done watching his movie and found her note.

The seats were plush and padded, much more than was normal in an LEP shuttle, but then this wasn't just _any_ LEP shuttle. Oh no. This was Commander Kelp's personal shuttle used for all his aboveground trips. Holly grinned. It gave her a savage pleasure to know that Trouble would be helping her out in spite of himself. She was certain Artemis would appreciate this bit of poetic justice once he woke up.

She glanced over her shoulder to where Artemis was stretched out on the shuttle floor, and then at the dashboard clock. Half of their time had already elapsed. Up until now she'd been steering the shuttle through the chute on manual. Piloting helped her relax and take her mind off the fact that trouble (of one sort or another) lay both behind and ahead of her. At one end of the chute was what was sure to be a very _very_ angry LEP commander; at the other was a murderous Mud Man. And she was certain that the latter was only slightly worse than the former.

With a sigh, Holly set the shuttle to autopilot and hopped out of the pilot's chair. She squatted next to Artemis and gave him a shake. "Come on, sleeping beauty. We could use a brilliant plan right about now."

Artemis groaned and his eyes flickered open. "Holly."

"Would a good slap help you to wake up faster?" she asked with a grin. "Because I'd be happy to help."

"No, that won't be necessary," he said, propping himself up on his elbows. "Though I don't doubt you'd enjoy it."

"Only a little," she said, punching him in the shoulder. And then, as he sat up and rubbed at his eyes, "I'm glad it's you, Artemis. I was afraid I might end up with Orion instead."

"Yes, and who knows what might have happened if the two of you were left alone together."

"I think I'd have shot him again."

Artemis winced. "You realize I can still feel it even when Orion is the one in control."

"A necessary evil," Holly said with a wink.

He was a little wobbly as he got to his feet and Holly grabbed onto his arm to steady him. "How are you feeling?"

"I'll be fine in a moment."

"What about the Atlantis Complex?"

He considered this for a few seconds and gave a curt nod. "I seem to be fine for the time being, at least until the medication wears off."

Holly reached into her pocket and produced a fistful of hypershots. "I've got you covered on that front."

"Thank you. These will be most helpful." He took two and slipped them into the pocket of his jeans, grimacing as he realized what he was still wearing. "I wish I'd had the chance to change out of this ridiculous outfit."

"Into what? Your prison jumpsuit?"

Artemis squeezed into the copilot's chair, crossing his arms over the cartoon character on hic chest. "No one will take me seriously in these clothes."

As she returned to her seat, she reached out to squeeze her friend's shoulder. "The more they underestimate you the better our chances."

A smile crept onto his lips. "Yes, you're right, Holly. Thank you. Now... what's our situation? Did the commander relent about offering us LEP support?"

"Not exactly." Holly flipped off the autopilot and placed her hands on the controls once more. "I kidnapped you." He raised an eyebrow. "Yes, I'm aware of the irony. I didn't think you'd object, though."

"Not especially."

"They'll probably think you abducted me anyway, at least until Foaly checks the hospital's cameras and sets them straight."

"I wouldn't do that," he said very quietly in a tone that made her turn her eyes from the chute ahead to meet his mismatched gaze. "Not again."

"I know, Artemis. I'm volunteering for this mission." Her smile faded then and her features crumpled into a scowl. "Billy Kong is a monster and should've been wiped of his memories of the People. This is the LEP's responsibility." Clenching the steering column in a white-knuckled grip she tried to let the out her frustration on the shuttle, but there really wasn't much challenge in heading up a wide, empty chute.

"No," Artemis said, "this entire situation is my doing. My past schemes continue to cause suffering to my family."

"There's enough blame to go around. No need to claim more than your share. The LEP should be involved. And they would be if it weren't for..." She darted a glance towards Artemis and then back outside. "Trouble... doesn't particularly like you," she began slowly.

"I gathered as much."

"He also doesn't like how much I've been visiting you. We had a row about it just today."

"And you believe he's refusing to involve the LEP due to his personal dislike of me?"

"Not only because of that, but I think it's weighing in more than it should. Times like this I miss Julius more than ever. He at least respected your abilities in spite of the all problems you caused him. And speaking of abilities, I don't suppose you have a plan?"

"I need information before I can attempt to do any planning. How long do we have?"

"About four hours." It did not escape her that he twitched at the number, and doubts began to well up in her. What if she'd made the wrong decision and Artemis really wasn't fit for this? She would be going up against a cold-blooded killer with a lunatic.

Artemis cleared his throat. "And what resources do we have?"

"Not much just yet. The usual equipment in my kit and the shuttle – iris-cams, camfoil, Neutrinos. Nothing you haven't seen before."

"Should we expect interference?"

Holly shook her head. "It'll take them a while to realize we're both missing and to figure out what's happened. We've got too much of a head start for anyone to stop us."

"Excellent. What about Foaly?"

"We might be able to wrangle some unofficial help from him, but for all intents and purposes we're on our own."

For a while Artemis was quite silent, his eyes shut, hands limp on his legs, and Holly thought he'd drifted back to sleep. She was on the verge of giving him a good shove and telling him that this was no time for naps when his eyes sprang open. "I'm afraid we'll have to simply agree to Kong's terms."

"You mean walk right into a trap? Now why didn't I think of that? It's absolutely brilliant."

"We've no choice if we're to discover where he's keeping the twins. I'm certain he has no intention of simply hading them over once we arrive."

"And what if his intention is to kill us on the spot?"

"It isn't."

Holly switched the autopilot back on and swivelled in her chair to face Artemis. "How can you be so sure?"

"The meeting site. There is more than Kong's personal vendetta against the People at work here. Whoever revealed to him the location of our first meeting – and in fact helped him to contact me in the first place – will surely want more than to just shoot us on the spot."

"This is your plan, Artemis? We just give ourselves up to him?"

"It's not so much as a plan as necessary step in a larger strategy."

Holly's eyes narrowed. "You're trying to force Trouble's hand. You want him to intervene, don't you?"

"Do you have a better suggestion?"

"No, but it's chancy. You know the form that LEP intervention can take. Trouble won't care about your brothers' welfare, Artemis. We'll have to locate them ourselves _before_ his team catches up with us."

"Kong will likely have us taken from the meeting site to another location, hopefully the same one where Myles and Beckett are being held. We can allow the LEP to track us there." He caught her gaze then and held it. "Will the commander employ a bio-bomb?"

"If he has to."

"In spite of our presence?"

Holly's lips twitched. "Don't kid yourself, Arty, _your_ presence will be an incentive."

"And yours?" he said, one eyebrow raised.

Holly ignored him. "The blue rinse is a last resort. Trouble isn't Sool or Cudgeon; he knows killing is the last possible option. He'll send in an insertion team first."

Artemis nodded thoughtfully. "Good then we should be able to keep the situation under control."

Holly snorted. "Control my foot. We're going to let ourselves be captured by a Mud Man who's barely more sane than you." He shot Holly a dirty look at this comment but otherwise held his tongue. After all, it was not very far from the truth. "What if I just _mesmerize_ Kong?"

"I suspect that when we arrive that won't be an option."

Holly grumbled something under he breath in Gnommish, which might – or might not – have been, "You're the expert."


	5. Deja Vu

**Chapter Five: Déjà Vu**

It was daylight when the shuttle left the chute through an older, little-used terminal off to the far end of the Tara shuttleport, and soared into an overcast Irish sky. As it was Commander Kelp's shuttle, it was top of the line and had excellent stealth capabilities, enabling them to land near the meeting site with over an hour to spare. If they'd had to make their way there on foot it would have been a nightmare. Artemis remembered it well enough from when he'd been twelve. Just off the southeast coast, the site was separated from the nearest road by a stile, a bog, and two fields. At least this way when he faced Kong he wouldn't be soaked to his skin.

"Artemis."

"Hmm?" Hands clasped behind his back, he paced the short length of the shuttle, trying to burn off nervous energy with physical action. So far it wasn't working. Instead, his thoughts kept turning to his mother. She would be beside herself with worry once she found out. And it would of course be Butler who would have to deliver the news once Foaly had informed him... which would be all of five minutes after Butler realized that Artemis was missing.

"Stop that."

"Stop what?"

Holly sniffed. "You don't even realize you're doing it, do you?"

He stopped in his tracks. "What is it that I'm doing that's so distressing?"

"You've been taking exactly five steps, over and over. And you've been muttering to yourself."

"Muttering?"

"Yes. Times tables, I think." She reached into her pocket and produced one of the hypershots. "Give me your arm. I think you need a dose before we head out there."

"Muttering?" he repeated as he sat down and let her administer the shot.

"And repeating yourself. Does that count as a symptom as well?"

He rubbed his arm, glowering at Holly. "Let's finish our preparations, shall we?"

"Whatever you say. This is your brilliant plan after all." Holly produced a pair of throat microphones and handed one to Artemis. He peeled off the back adhesive layer and placed the small strip of memory latex on his throat. After a moment it took on the colouring of his skin and would be completely undetectable. She also took a moment to spray them both with a radioactive tracer. It was harmless, but would allow Foaly to track their whereabouts with ease.

Next came a pair of iris-cams, each with the appearance of a contact lense floating in a vial of fluid. Holly fished one out with the tip of her index finger and deftly placed it on her left eye, turning her one blue eye hazel. She blinked a few times, adjusting to the iris-cam and held up the second vial. "We have one in your colour this time, courtesy of the shuttle's well-stocked equipment locker."

Artemis flashed a vampire smile. "I shall have to thank Commander Kelp later for the use of this shuttle. His personal shuttle, did you say?"

"His very own. Just back from the cleaner's too."

"How very considerate of the commander."

"Here," she said, slipping the blue iris-cam onto the tip of her finger, "let me."

He knelt so that Holly could reach his face; he was too tall now otherwise. She leaned in and slipped the iris-cam onto his left hazel eye, which he had inherited from her during their foray through the time stream. The camera was not entirely comfortable and he resisted the urge to rub at it, blinking several times until it settled properly over his iris. "What is it?" he asked when he realized Holly was watching him intently.

She smiled sheepishly. "Your eyes. I'm not used to the matching set anymore. It's been a while."

Her eyes, too, matched once again thanks to the tinted iris-cam and he felt a slight pang even though he knew it was no more than a disguise. _We'll always be a part of each other now_, she had told him.

"You should remove any other technology you're carrying from you pockets," he said finally, breaking eye contact.

"All ready done. And I've sent out the message to Foaly's voice box. I'd say we're set to go."

"In that case–"

Holly snagged his arm before he could stand up again. "We're going to get them back, Artemis."

"Yes, of course we are."

"What is it then?"

He did not meet her eyes. "It seems that no matter what I do I can't escape my own mistakes. And those around me continue to suffer for it. Myles and Becket are innocents, Holly."

"This isn't your fault, Artemis. And your brothers will be fine. They won't remember any of it, I promise you."

He pulled away from her and rose to his feet. "We should go. It's almost time."

She wanted to say more but finally she only nodded. "Right. Let's go."

**ooo**

The last time Artemis had been here, it had been nighttime, a full moon, its light silvering the long grass and the river's gentle coils. Today the water looked dull in the pallid afternoon light that filtered through the clouds, and the ancient oak, tucked into the river's bend, dripped with the moisture of an earlier shower.

They walked in silence. The shuttle was shielded and would remain undetectable, but Holly had parked it in a thicket some distance away so that they would not be seen appearing out of thin air. Ahead, the clearing where the oak stood sentinel by the river was empty. Artemis's eyes scanned the area where he and Butler had set up the blind all those years ago. It would be as good a place for an ambush now as it had then.

They came to a halt near the oak and Artemis grimaced as a breeze shook its branches and sent droplets of water onto his face. He wiped them away and used the opportunity to cast a sidelong glance at Holly. She was alert, her eyes darting about the clearing, waiting for their enemies to make their move, and seemed little concerned about the meeting place itself. But then she'd returned here at least once before, after healing Butler – perhaps other times as well; he had never cared to ask.

Holly spun, and a few seconds later Artemis heard it too, the sound of approaching footsteps. As Kong sauntered into the clearing, Artemis moved to straighten his tie – and then chided himself as he remembered that he was not in a suit. Randomosity indeed. Kong ran his fingers through his spiked hair, smiling broadly. His eyes were hidden behind designer shades, but as he approached, Artemis's suspicions were confirmed.

"Mirrored lenses," Holly muttered in Gnommish.

"Indeed," Artemis replied in kind.

"You made it," Kong said, hands buried in the pockets of his jacket as he came to a halt a good ten feet away from them.

"Yes," Artemis said. "As promised. Now, I'd appreciate it if you would release Myles and Beckett."

Kong smirked. "We'll get to that. But for right now, I think you should take a little nap."

They took Holly down first, a dart shooting from the brush and catching her in the shoulder, delivering a dose of succinylcholine chloride into her bloodstream. As she slumped to the ground, pain flashing over her features, Artemis was overwhelmed by a sense of déjà vu. And in the moments before a second dart sent him reeling, he felt guilt surge through him as if it were he who had ordered the shot again. After all, it was because of him that she was here. If it weren't for him and his plans, none of this would ever have been.

It was that thought that lingered longest as the darkness claimed him.

**ooo**

While it was afternoon in Ireland, it was obscenely early in the morning in Haven City. And though Police Plaza never slept, its commander did on occasion like to. That being the case, Trouble Kelp was less than pleased after a long day at the office to be woken by an emergency call a scant few hours after he'd finally hit the sack.

Pausing only to purchase a nettle-flavoured energy drink at an all-night vendor, Trouble made his way back to Police Plaza and was there a full two hours before morning rush hour even began. Artemis Fowl. The very name made his stomach roil as if he'd scarfed down an order of mystery meat burgers with a side-order of flatulence fries from Spud's Spud Emporium. It was bad enough that the Mud Boy was in Haven itself, monopolizing the airwaves – not to mention a ludicrous amount of Holly's time and energy – but now he'd managed to cause yet another incident and, as usual, embroil Holly in it as well. Typical Mud Man: inconsiderate to the very last.

Foaly was already settled back in the ops booth, looking as fresh as the carrot clenched in his teeth. Centaurs may not have had magic like most fairies, but they had the distinct advantage of needing very little in the way of sleep. "Morning, Commander," Foaly greeted him with deliberate cheerfulness.

Trouble gulped down his energy drink. "My office. Now. And try not to sound so... chipper."

"Right, Commander. Note to self, try to be more dreary in the morning."

"It isn't morning yet," Trouble grumbled and then trudged back to his office before Foaly could make a smart reply. The centaur clip clopped after him a few moments later and began his briefing, leaving his techies to keep an eye on his surveillance feeds.

The queasy feeling in the pit of Trouble's stomach only intensified as Foaly reported that both Holly, Fowl, and his private shuttle had gone missing and subsequently been tracked to Ireland. "D'Arvit," Trouble snarled once Foaly got to the end of it. "So Fowl kidnapped her. Again."

Foaly shifted from one hoof to the other. "Well no. Not according to the camera feeds from the Argon Clinic."

"Fine then, he manipulated her into going along with one of his little plans."

"Actually, it looks like Argon had Artemis sedated right after the call to Police Plaza so I don't think there was time for him to–"

"Because if he didn't," Trouble cut in, "I'll have Captain Short's badge and she'll be going back to Vice Squad. Is that clear?"

Foaly snorted. "Right. Sneaky Mud Boy tricks gullible fairy. Got it, Commander."

Trouble scowled. Times like these he understood why Julius had been continually threatening to slash Foaly's budget. "Do you have a location?"

Foaly nodded. "They sprayed themselves with a tracer so I'm tracking them, no problem. I've also got a feed from their throat microphones and iris-cams."

"So what can you see?"

"Nothing," Foaly said with a shrug.

"Nothing?"

"Their eyes are closed. Tranquilliser dart fired by Billy Kong's accomplice. The footage cut out as soon as they went under. They're on the move though, heading north."

Although it was only the beginning of what was certain to be a very long day, Trouble could feel a headache coming on that all the magic in the world would not cure, a dull throbbing right between his eyes. A fairy had been captured by Mud Men. There were very few options in such a scenario. The secret of the People's existence must be maintained at all costs. Holly knew that – she _knew_ that and still she'd put him in this position. If worse came to worst he would have to order her vaporized. And if it came to that he would damn well make sure Artemis Fowl got vaporized along with her.

"All right, Foaly, listen up. I'm going to assemble a Retrieval team but I want your techies ready to head to the surface."

"Commander?"

"We're going to need a time-stop on this one."


	6. Newgrange

**Chapter Six: Newgrange**

When Artemis opened his leaden eyelids, it was to find himself staring into a pair of big hazel eyes. He was lying on his side and it took him moment to realize that the reason his shoulders ached so was because his hands were bound behind his back. Holly appeared more alert and she used her elbows to prop herself up into a sitting position. She shifted away to inspect the far wall – except it wasn't a wall, he realized. They were in the back of a van.

"I could get that open if I had an omnitool," she said in Gnommish, "but I suppose escape isn't part of your brilliant plan."

"Not yet, no," he replied in Gnommish, just it in case their captors were listening in.

Holly huffed and then turned her attention back to the van, scanning its interior with her gaze. "Foaly, do you read me?"

When she winced and squeezed her left eye shut, he knew that Foaly could hear them loud and clear. This was confirmed a moment later when his own iris-cam switched momentarily to infrared and then back to normal, sending an electric shock through his eye. "Thank you, Foaly. I'm glad you can hear me as well."

There was just the slightest hint of sarcasm in the statement. So, as planned, Foaly could hear them and could see what they saw, but would remain unable to speak to them – and thus unable to interfere. While on the one hand, Foaly's input would have been invaluable, they could not risk earpieces which would likely be spotted by their captors and, worse yet, they could not risk having Commander Kelp relay his orders to Holly which would put her in a truly untenable position.

It was only a minute or so later that Kong cracked open the van doors. Though night had fallen, his eyes remained shaded by the mirrored lenses. It was clear from the bulge in his jacket that he was sporting a weapon, but he hardly needed it while Myles and Beckett remained in his power. And Kong knew it. "All right, boys and girls. We're going to take a walk. Nothing tricky unless you want to decrease the number of heirs to the Fowl estate by one or two."

Artemis and Holly shifted and slid out of the van, Artemis stumbling to his feet while Holly simply hopped to the ground with ease in spite of her bound hands. His cheeks burned as he heard Kong snicker.

Kong proceeded to walk them down a paved laneway. In the distance, in the centre of a green field, he could make out a grassy hillock, ringed by a stone wall. He knew immediately where they were. Newgrange! His heart ached as he realized how close he was to home. He was less than an hour's drive from Fowl Manor, just a bit further north.

The circular mound loomed ahead of them, some thirteen metres at its highest point and eighty metres in diameter. Quartz cobbles, making up the retaining wall around the entrance, shone in the spotlights that had been installed as part of the site's security system. Newgrange was a popular tourist attraction and a world heritage site so great pains were taken to avoid vandalism but apparently Kong and his accomplices had had little difficulty circumventing the site's security measures.

Artemis's heart hammered as they made their way towards the mound. He had come here as a child with his parents on the winter Solstice when, for a few minutes at dawn, the sun slanted through an opening above the door known as a roof-box, and lit up the inner passageway of the tomb. Only a handful or people were able to witness the dramatic event each year and he had rigged the lottery to allow him the chance to see it for himself. He had always imagined returning one day with Myles and Beckett once they were old enough to appreciate the display.

_And once again even my most innocuous of plans has caused my family to suffer._

He tried to block out the image of his mother's almost inevitable hysterics. And to think that this time it was not only _one_ of her sons who was in danger, but all three of them.

They followed the path until they reached the entrance to the grassy dome. A ring of roughly oval stones formed a kerb around the base of the mound. They stood at Holly's height and some three to four metres in length. The stone that lay directly before the tomb entrance was carved with a pattern of spirals and the triple spiral that had become an emblem for the site itself and Neolithic art more generally.

"In we go," Kong said with a smirk, gesturing towards the opening that led into the huge dome of earth. The entrance was made up of two stone slabs covered by a lintel stone. Above it was the aperture that allowed sunlight to enter the chamber on the morning of the winter solstice. Kong had to duck beneath the lintel as they proceeded inside, their footsteps echoing hollowly along the stone walls. Newgrange was what was known as a passage tomb, a narrow passageway beneath the mound, leading to a central chamber. From his previous visits, Artemis knew the passage was nineteen metres in length and a meter wide, but it had not seemed so cramped when he had come here as a child. Sweat dripped down his spine even in the cool air and he shuddered. He kept count of the stones slabs on either side even though he knew there were forty-three in total. He was only thankful that there were not forty-four – a most ominous number indeed!

_Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen..._

"Artemis," Holly hissed.

"Stop muttering, kid," Kong said, cuffing him on the ear, and Artemis realized with horror that he'd been counting aloud.

They passed another triple spiral carved into the stone as they reached the end of the passageway and moved into the central chamber where a pair of chairs, which were not normally part of the display, had been set. "Take a seat," Kong said and it was clearly not a suggestion. In a matter of moments they were secured to the chairs by handcuffs with digital locking mechanisms, facing each other. "Sit tight, there's someone who'd like to see you both. An old friend, let's say."

Holly grimaced as he moved back down the passageway. "I don't like the sound of that." The spotlights inside the chamber cast the stone in an orange hue, only a few shades lighter than Holly's hair. Artemis's eyes lingered on the new fringe, noted the way a few strands were tucked behind one pointed ear while others tumbled loose in a disarray that would have been entirely impossible with her previous crew cut. He could almost hear Orion commenting about the dramatic backlighting.

"Holly, tell me something..." he began, as he felt Atlantis Complex twinge somewhere at the base of his skull where Orion and the net of fours were locked up tight thanks to his cocktail of psychoactive drugs. "Archeologists have described Newgrange as a burial mound and site of religious ritual for Neolithic human communities. However it also comes up in myths involving the Tuatha Dé Dannan, so would I be correct in assuming that the People once used this site as well?"

"Yes," Holly said slowly, not quite meeting his eyes. "Back when the People lived aboveground."

Artemis scowled. "What was the site's original function?"

"Well you see... it was a nightclub. For singles."

"A nightclub?" Artemis repeated, taken aback.

Holly nodded. "They used to put on a wicked light show at winter Solstice so I've heard. They had extensive underground facilities. This area was just to funnel the lineups – it was a really exclusive club. That," she said, jutting her chin towards the triple spiral, "was the club's logo."

Artemis took a moment to digest this information. "Irish myth ties the site to Aengus who is commonly thought to have been a god of youth and love." His voice echoed hollowly in the chamber, but he went on lest he start keeping track of his word count. "He's said to have married a mortal woman."

He wondered if it was just the hue of the spotlights or if Holly's cheeks really were slightly flushed as she replied. "Aengus was the elf who ran the nightclub. And he was married... to a human."

Artemis raised an eyebrow. "So Turnball's relationship was not unheard of. There is precedent for such unions?"

"Yes," Holly replied a bit stiffly. "Some. But it was complicated. Even back then when humans knew about the People."

"I see," he said simply. And then after some moments' silence, "There is a well-known story about Aengus – the mythical one. 'The Dream of Aengus' tells of how he glimpsed a mortal woman in his dreams, the most beautiful woman he'd ever laid eyes on. For a year her saw her night after night but he could never touch her. He fell in love with this woman but told no one until finally he grew pale and sick for love of her."

Holly's hazel eyes locked with his. "Why didn't he tell anyone?"

"Because he knew she could never be his."

"Atremis–"

They both turned to glance down the passageway as the sound of plodding footfalls echoed through the chamber. The less than adequate lighting made it difficult to make out details, but Artemis recognised the hulking form that approached. It was a small miracle he could fit through the narrow passage at all.

"Well hello Ah-temis," he said as he reached the inner chamber, drawing out the syllables of Artemis's name. "So good to see you again after all these years. What a fine young man you've become. Why you were just yay high the last time – if you recall."

"Of course, Damon," Artemis replied cooly. Much like Billy Kong, Damon Kronski, former leader of the now defunct Extinctionists movement, was a difficult man to forget. Just as in Morocco, he was draped in camouflage gear, though now his eyes were hidden by a pair of mirrored lenses rather than regular sunglasses.

"I hear you've been spending time with the shrinks of late, Ah-temis. Nervous breakdown, they say." He shook his head and tutted. "Such a waste of time – and I speak from personal experience. I've spent a while with shrinks, you know. After that incident in the souk." His Louisiana drawl was oddly mangled by the chamber's acoustics, returning the vowels to their ears in long moans.

Artemis's skin crawled as Kronski turned his attention to Holly, towering over her and then reaching out with sausage-like fingers to grasp her chin and tilt her head up. His other hand reached out to tweak the pointed tip of one ear – at which point Holly said something very rude in Gnommish.

"They're real," Kronski murmured. "I knew they were. All this time, I _knew_..."

Holly rolled her eyes and yanked her face away from him. "Am I the only sane person here?" she muttered.

Kronski scowled. "I don't believe I've been introduced to your little friend, Ah-temis. Or should I say your accomplice?"

Artemis shrugged. "I hardly think this is a situation where introductions are warranted. We're here as promised and I would like to ascertain my brothers' situation. Are they safe or not?"

"You're not in a position to make demands, Ah-temis."

Artemis kept his voice even. He was in a better position than Kronski believed, but it was imperative that he allow Foaly to ascertain the twins' location. "It's not a demand, Kronski, but a question."

Kronski huffed but finally pulled a phone from his pocket. "How are the preparations coming along?" He paused then, nodding as he listened. And then, "Bring them with you when you come over."

Some minutes later footsteps could be heard echoing through the passageway to the burial chamber. Artemis took long, slow breaths as he waited, unable to see down the corridor from where he sat. Relief swept through him when the pair of blond toddlers were ushered into the room, but even the orange tint of the spotlights could not disguise the paleness of their features. Beckett's eyes were red and swollen, though by the way he bit his lip and the way his eyes darted about the room it was clear that he was too terrified to cry in the presence of their captors.

Before he could get a look at third man, however, the spotlights illuminating the room whirred to life and swung in his direction, blinding him. "I control the horizontal," said a man's voice. It was distorted by the chamber's acoustics but the accent was American, though not the southern twang of his associate. The lights shifted again, flashing away and then back into Artemis's eyes. "I control the vertical." There was a bark of laughter and then the lights dimmed once more. "Hello, Arty. Long time no see." A pair of hands shoved the two boys forward towards Kronski. When Artemis's dazzled eyes recovered, it took all his remaining nerve to keep his expression neutral.

A middle-aged man, decked out in a white linen suit, his hands and wrists glinting with gold jewellery, smirked at Artemis as he gripped what looked to be a modified Blackberry. "Handy little trinket," he said as he adjusted the direction of the spotlights once more and then patted the device and placed it back into his pocket.

"Spiro," Artemis breathed, mind reeling. Artemis was taller than John Spiro now, which, granted wasn't saying much, but while the American had been gaunt the last time they'd met, his face was fuller now, his hands fleshed out and no longer skeletal as they'd been. Artemis cocked an eyebrow. "It appears prison life has suited you well." When they had met some five years ago, Spiro had been suffering from "gut problems," serious ones if his rail-thin looks had been any indication. That he should have recovered his health so dramatically while in prison seemed peculiar to say the least. Peculiar unless fairy magic was involved, of course.

"It looks like you've still got that smart mouth on you there. How does that go over in the psych ward, Arty? I hear you've had a cozy padded room all to yourself." He turned to Kronski before Artemis could reply. "Did you check their eyes like I told you?'

"I did, but feel free to check for yourself if it'll ease your mind."

Myles and Becket were forced to shuffle closer to Kronski as Spiro pushed past them to stand before Artemis. Spiro leaned in and Artemis stared into his own blue eyes reflected back at him in Spiro's mirrored lenses. "Blue," Spiro muttered. "Good." During the operation at the Spiro Needle, Artemis had been wearing an iris-cam which, unfortunately, had been tinted hazel for Holly's eyes. Much to Spiro's misfortune, he hadn't noticed Artemis's mismatched eye colour until it was too late.

Spiro turned and leaned down to inspect Holly who glowered at him in return. "So you're the creature Billy and Damon have been going on and on about." He straightened and glanced over his shoulders at the larger man. "Frankly, Damon, I was expecting something a little more... menacing." A looked flashed across Holly's features as if she intended to show Spiro just how menacing she could be, but she bit her tongue, much to Artemis's relief.

"That creature has magic," Kronski said with an indignant huff. "Don't you forget about that."

Spiro shrugged and then turned to glance over at Artemis. "You know all those years I spent in jail I kept trying to figure out where I'd gone wrong, what the flaw in my security system was. It was state of the art but somehow how a brat like you managed to crack it. Imagine when I found out that you had help. From a fairy." He circled Holly like a cat eying a fishbowl. "Shouldn't you have wings or sparkle or something?"

Holly rolled her eyes. "Where do you humans come up with these ridiculous stereotypes? Next you'll be asking me where the end of the rainbow is and what I've done with my crock of gold."

"Kids these days," Spiro huffed. "Don't know when the hell to keep their mouths shut. I don't think the two of your realize just how much trouble you're in. By tomorrow morning the two of you are going to be big TV stars."

"Is that so, Spiro?" Artemis said, cooly.

"By morning this place will be swarming with hippies and tourists who want to see that whole solstice light show. Now maybe you've heard about this, but they do a webcast of the whole thing." He spun to face Holly. "And won't those pointed ears look pretty when they're broadcast live all over the internet."

Artemis chuckled. "I think you've lost your edge during your time in prison, Spiro. The viewing public is not so credulous as you believe them to be. Pointed ears? They'll assume it's a fake. You might as well let us go and save yourself the humiliation of having your arrest broadcast live across the world wide web."

The grin that broke out on Spiro's features was not comforting. Not in the least. "Oh don't worry we'll have more than ears to show them. I know from my associates that your little friend there can heal things so I figured we could ask her to do a little demonstration." He raised a hand and hurried on before either hostage could cut in with a snide remark. "Now don't worry I know that's not going to happen just by asking." He stuffed his hands into his pockets and circled Artemis's chair with slow, casual steps, pausing when he was behind him. "But what would happen – and this just is a theoretical scenario, you understand..." He placed his hands on Artemis's shoulder and leaned down to speak next to his ear. "What would happen if you ended up injured? _Seriously_ injured."

Artemis could feel the throat mic riding on his Adam's apple as he swallowed. His eyes met Holly's and could see reflected there the horror he felt. He had put her in this position, forcing her to choose between himself and the People. Blood thrummed through his temples, but he could not look away; Holly's eyes seemed almost to _mesmerize_ him, without voice, without magic.

_This is my fault. And it's worse than lying to her was._

"And on the off chance she's not too attached to you, Arty," Spiro went on, "I'm sure it could be arranged for one of the kids over there to have a little accident too. Maybe both of them. The world is such an unsafe place these days."

Artemis licked his lips, his thoughts racing as he tried to salvage the situation. Surely the LEP would come once Foaly reported this and yet the risk... "The webcast will only be viewed by a handful of people. You're mad if you think it will be seen as anything more than an elaborate hoax."

"Mad?" Spiro said with a snort. "Now that's the pot calling the kettle black. Don't worry yourself about the details, Arty. We'll have eye witnesses and I can promise you that this webcast is going to have a bigger viewership than normal. We'll see to that." Artemis frowned as Spiro smirked and, for the second time, began spouting lines from an old television show. "There's nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission." Spiro winked and then reached into his pocket for his phone, his jewellery jangling as he did. "What's our status?" After a few seconds he nodded to Kronski. They spared a moment to bind the twins with a length of rope and tie them off to a railing at the back of the chamber and then they off again.

No sooner did the two men leave than Holly began to struggle against her restraints. After a few moment, she winced and sat still again. "These cuffs have a sharp edge. I seem to have cut myself on them," she deadpanned.

"You plan to syphon off your supply of magic?"

Holly nodded. "There won't be any point in hurting you if I don't have any magic left to heal you with."

Privately, Artemis thought that his history with their captors might be reason enough for them to wish him harm, but he kept that thought to himself; at least she would not be risking the People's exposure.

Artemis turned his attention back to the present as Beckett began to cry. Myles looked dolefully at him but did not speak, his eyes darting from his twin, to his elder brother, to then linger on Holly, a crease forming in his smooth brow.

"Beckett," Artemis said, "please remain calm. The situation in not as dire as it seems." And while Artemis had intended for the comment to be comforting it only had the effect of setting Beckett crying harder than ever.

"No want to dire!" Beckett wailed and even Myles looked like his lower lip was beginning to tremble.

"It's all right," Holly said, gently. Beckett paused mid-wail to look in her direction. "Look at me." Artemis could hear the layered tones of the _mesmer_ in her voice and made a point of avoiding her eyes, keeping his attention fixed, instead, on his brothers. "Don't worry. Artemis will make everything all right again soon. Okay?"

"S'okay," Beckett murmured, while Myles only nodded.

Yet she said it with such confidence that Artemis felt a mixture of pride and pleasure welling up in him – quickly followed by the Atlantis Complex writhing in its prison at the base of his skull.

_This is no time for self-satisfaction. This entire situation is my fault and any harm that results lies firmly on my shoulders._

She glanced back in Artemis's direction and he nodded to her. "Thank you, Holly." He turned then to his brothers. "Perhaps you might like to take a nap? It may be some hours yet before we have the opportunity to go home."

Beckett pouted. "Hate naps."

Artemis sighed. He knew that somewhere far, far away, a certain centaur was most assuredly whinnying with laughter.


	7. Toil and Trouble

**Chapter Seven: Toil and Trouble**

Being stuck in the outbuilding used as headquarters when he could be outside, enjoying the cool, surface air was not something Trouble was especially pleased about. He quite envied Foaly's techies who were already swarming over the site, preparing it for a time-stop, as well as his own officers who had long since secured their position at Newgrange.

"So what am I looking at, Foaly?" Trouble said as he peered over the centaur's shoulder at the display screen. The video feed from Artemis and Holly's iris-cams had been paused and blown up so that two human faces were visible in great detail.

"Looks like Billy Kong has a couple of accomplices. This one's our old friend John Spiro and the other is Damon Kronski, the head of the Extinctionists movement that Holly and Artemis ran into during their time travel spree earlier this year."

"So they've all teamed up to make Fowl miserable. That's fine with me, but why are they dragging Holly into it?"

Foaly shrugged. "Kong got the idea in his head that the People murdered his brother and he saw Holly at the Paradizo manor. Kronski got a good look at her too after little Artemis sold her to him. What's strange is that none of these three should even _know_ each other."

Trouble's purple eyes fixed on the centaur, willing him to get to the point. They didn't have all night. "How's that?"

"Up until a few weeks ago Kong and Spiro were in prison and Kronski's been in and out of mental institutions for the past eight years."

"You know what Mud Men prisons are like," Trouble said with a shrug. "They let dangerous felons out all the time."

Foaly's fingers danced over his v-board, pulling up several files. "These chaps didn't just stroll out, though. Kong managed to escape during a prison riot and Spiro faked his death. Prison records say he died in a state hospital three and a half weeks ago."

Crossing his arms over his chest, Trouble scowled at his technical advisor. "What are you getting at? And make it quick. I need my team out there as soon as possible."

"I'm saying that someone has engineered all of this, Commander, and I'm not convinced it's any of those three Mud Men. There's no record of them having any knowledge of or contact with each other until recently. There's no reason they should even know about each other, let alone about the People. The only connection they've got is Artemis."

Trouble's complexion was taking on a reddish hue that could not but remind any observers of his late predecessor, Commander Root. "Maybe Fowl's the one who's behind all of this. Did you ever think of that, Foaly?"

A whinny escape Foaly's lips before he noticed Trouble's expression. "Are you being serious, Commander? Artemis has been confined to the Argon clinic for months and I've been keeping tabs on all his communication. Not to mention he's a few characters short of a full keyboard just at the moment."

"Maybe he's been faking all the while. This Orion person could be just a smokescreen to make us drop our guard." This earned a whinny and several hoof stomps. "Foaly!" Trouble snarled – but it was very difficult to make onself heard over the sound of a guffawing centaur.

"Mud Boy's not that good of an actor, Commander. You should have heard him when we were in the shuttle that one time. Going on about looking for birth marks and Holly exuding beauty and all that."

"He – what?"

"And there's another thing," Foaly went on, clearing his throat and tapping at his keyboard again. "When Spiro mentioned the webcast – the way he was talking about having a wider viewership... It sounds almost as if they were planning to override a satellite feed."

"Can that be done?"

"I could do it. It might take me a few hours to set up what with having to write the override procedures but I'd also have to use up an entire week's quota of power. So no, not unless they had a huge power source."

Trouble snorted. "Once the time-field is up he won't be able to broadcast anything. _Right, Foaly_?"

"Obviously," Foaly replied with a very definite hint of derision as if Trouble were asking him to confirm that dwarves were, in fact, hairy.

"Well then it shouldn't be a problem. So do you have any useful intel for me or not?"

"No need to get your ears in a tangle. I've got satellite feeds for the whole area. It's clear. We'll be ready within the hour."

"Good. Then we get in, take out those Mud Men, wipe the whole lot of them, and do a relocation. It's not like they'll be missed. Maybe we should wipe Fowl too while we're at it."

"Right," Foaly said with a snort. "After all that worked wonders last time."

"It would cure him of the Atlantis Complex," Trouble said. And then he stalked out of headquarters before Foaly could decide whether or not he was joking.

**ooo**

Artemis started at the sound of Holly's voice. "How are you holding up?"

"Tolerably well. Why do you ask?" She glanced downward and he followed her gaze to where his foot was tapping a staccato rhythm on the earthen floor. Even as a child he had never fidgeted, not until a few months ago. "Stress can heighten the effects of the Atlantis Complex," he explained.

While touching, the concern on her features was not really what he had hoped to inspire in such a situation. When he was well, he commanded her confidence, her respect even, but now these had been replaced by doubt and pity.

"How are _you_ faring?" he asked in turn. Blood flecked the earth below her chair as she continued to syphon away her magic.

"We're getting there," she replied, wincing.

He was still counting on the LEP's intervention. Surely they would intercede; they were required to in order to preserve the secret of the People's existence. It was the middle of the night here in Ireland and thus the best time for them to act. What Holly was doing was only a precautionary measure.

Off to one side, Myles and Beckett remained alert but silent, their eyes wide like frightened hares. _This is all my doing, the natural consequence of all my years of scheming._

Holly's head snapped around. A moment later he heard it too. Footsteps. Three sets. Spiro, Kong, and Kronski came to join them in the central chamber of the burial mound. Artemis noted that Kronski was carrying a large burlap bag slung over his shoulder. With his girth he had the appearance of a militaristic Santa Claus.

"Hello there, Arty," Spiro said jovially. The smile on his face put Artemis in mind of an alligator's toothy grin. "I thought you might be getting a little bored. How about a little TV to cheer you up."

He held up the sleek, dark screen of the Blackberry and pressed the on button. The image displayed was that of a man, standing behind a counter, frozen in the act of reaching towards a blender. On the bottom of the screen a 1-800 number that had been in the process of scrolling across the screen, now remained fixed on the left side, flickering every few seconds.

Spiro flipped through several channels and all, like the first, were paused. They were in the midst of a time-stop.

"Technology. You just can't count on it unless you patented it yourself," Spiro said, but he did not appear surprised at all. He only shrugged and placed the screen on an outcrop of stone at the back of the chamber where they could all see it. It was frozen in the midst of a weather report, but there, in the lower left corner, in bold, red characters, was the channel logo: channel four weather. Sweat beaded Artemis's brow as he felt that ominous four looming over them from its perch. He tried to avert his gaze, but even when he fixed his attention on their captors, he could feel the weight of the four's blank stare, like an all-seeing-eye, wide and unblinking.

Artemis shuddered as he reviewed that thought. The Atlantis Complex was gaining hold on his thinking again and he doubted his captors would be willing to dose him with his medication.

"Well that's all right," Spiro went on, smiling once more. "We've brought party favours."

Kronski dropped the sack onto the floor and leaned down to reach into it.

_And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack_, Artemis thought, remembering the lines from _The Night Before Christmas_. But Kronski was neither the popularised "right jolly old elf" of the rhyme, nor San D'Klaus, the third king of the Frond elfin dynasty who had tried to make peace with ancient humans by using a time-stop to deliver gifts to them overnight. Nor were the gifts he produced from the sack typical stocking stuffers.

Kronski began handing out gas masks. The three men donned their masks and then slotted them over the faces of their captives. They had even acquired masks sized for children, which were ideally suited to Holly and the twins. How thoughtful.

Beckett hiccuped, lip trembling as they moved the mask towards his face. "Like a scuba mask," Myles offered.

His twin glanced at him hopefully. "We going to swim?"

"Maybe later, kid," Kong barked and then forced the mask onto Beckett.

The hiss of their breathing was amplified by the masks, reverberating off the walls like a nest of snakes.

"I don't like this," Holly muttered in Gnommish, her voice hollow and toneless through the mask's filter. Artemis was inclined to agree. Something was about to go terribly wrong. Even through the plastic visor of his mask he could feel the weight of that four on the TV screen. Its forecast for tomorrow: death.

**ooo**

It was only a short while earlier that Trouble had been making his rounds, checking in with his team and keeping an eye on Foaly's technical assistants as they set up the dishes that were required to cover the area in the time-field. Long rows of hedges boxed off the central burial mound from the adjacent fields, conveniently providing a definite boundary for the time-field. There were several outbuilding along the edge of the property and the LEP had secured these to be used as staging areas; Trouble didn't want his men being caught in the open on the slim chance that these Mud Men could detect shielded fairies. He had made that mistake once before and was not about to repeat it.

"Status report, Captain Stonecrop," Trouble said into his com system.

"Everything A-Okay, sir," was the reply over the channel. "Everyone's in position and waiting for the go ahead."

"Copy that."

Trouble nodded with satisfaction. He could have just ordered his team to storm the passage tomb, but given the nature of their adversaries and the possibility that they knew something of the People, a time-stop was their best bet. The Mud Men would be cut off from the rest of the world, unable to communicate with anyone outside of the time-field. And _then_ he and his team would storm them with no worries about Holly's image ending up all over the internet.

It was just before one a.m. local time when Foaly announced that they were ready. The techies scurried back to the outbuildings while Trouble mustered his team of Retrieval commandoes. "All right, Foaly," Trouble ordered through his com system. "Push the button."

A horsey snort came through the channel in reply. "You know, Commander, there is no actual button. I have to run through a series of delicate startup procedures, not just–"

"Just do it, Foaly," Trouble snapped.

"You LEP commanders are all the same," Foaly grumbled. A minute later the air around the Newgrange passage tomb began to shimmer. An azure field sprang to life from the corners of the site, where the dishes were set up, spreading until they met over the centre of the mound. The sky was visible through this shimmering azure field, as if one were staring at the world through tinted glass. The stars raced across the night sky winking in and out of view as clouds swept over them and galloped away just as quickly at an unnaturally fast pace.

Trouble nodded. Foaly had done his job properly. The time-stop was in effect and for the next eight hours they were in limbo, cut off from the rest of the world and the normal flow of time. And there was no escape for the Mud Men. Well unless they intended to dose themselves with sleeping pills, but that seemed counterproductive. Until six years ago, fairy warlocks and scientific know-it-alls like Foaly had considered escaping from a time-field to be impossible. Artemis Fowl had proven them wrong. Twelve-year-old Fowl had found that drugging someone within the time-field to induce sleep allowed them to escape back into the normal flow of time.

Much as he would have liked to stay out in the open, Trouble returned to the outbuilding that was being used as their headquarters for the operation. A terminal was set up allowing him to view his officers' progress. "Captain Stonecrop, do you read?" he said through his com channel.

"Yessir."

Truth be told, Trouble would have liked to have led the strike force himself. The idea of storming into the passage tomb, stunning the trio of Mud Men, and seeing the expression on Artemis Fowl's face as he and Holly were rescued by no less than the Commander of the LEP, was appealing. So very appealing that he hesitated and almost told Stonecrop to wait for him. But he was in command and that meant staying behind in case something went wrong during the initial assault. Still, it would have been nice to redeem himself after that embarrassing incident with Butler six years ago. Even now, people occasionally reminded him (Grub not least among them) that the bodyguard had wiped the floor with him and his team.

"Head out."

"Roger that, Commander."

He watched the helmet feeds as the Retrieval team went airborne for their approach on the passage tomb. They flew in a V-formation with Captain Stonecrop in the lead and set down just outside the tomb entrance, taking up defensive positions behind the curb stones, shielded all the while.

"We have a narrow entrance ahead," Stonecrop announced over his com channel. "Numbers one, two, three, and four, head in slow and quiet. Get a visual on the kidnappers and Captain Short. We'll hang by the entrance and keep you covered."

Four statements of assent followed, and two by two the LEP officers left their cover and moved into the passageway of the tomb. "Nice of them to leave the door open, innit?" commented one of the officers who remained behind.

"They're not expecting guests," replied another. "Not the likes of us anyway."

"Maintain radio silence," snapped Stonecrop. "This is no time for chatter."

The four officers disappeared through the doorway and began to make their way down the length of the passage, moving slowly. Any slip of the foot could send sound bouncing off the stone walls, alerting the Mud Men in the central chamber. Silent movement was essential, though also easier said than done when your molecules were vibrating at ultra-high speed.

Stonecrop moved his team to the passage entrance, blocking the main escape route. "Almost there, boys," Stonecrop said to the four ahead of them. "Just another eight metres." Trouble Kelp squinted at the feed from the four officers' helmets. At first he thought there was a problem with the cameras, for the image appeared cloudy. He wondered briefly if one of the officers had brushed up a storm of dust. But then the camera image plunged to the ground and stayed there, while the sound of hacking and gasping rasped over the com channel.

"Report, Retrieval One! What's your status?" His question was met with wheezing. "Retrieval One, retreat. Retreat. Return to HQ."

Instead of a reply what he got was Foaly's voice cutting into his com channel. "Commander, you need to–"

"What's going on with Retrieval One, Foaly? What readings are you getting from their suits?"

"You need to get out of there. The ventilation system is..."

_The air system?_ Trouble thought, wondering if air was all that was between the centaur's ears. _Why's he going on about the air system at a time like this?_

But what precisely was wrong with the ventilation system Trouble didn't hear. The air was as thick as cream, sticking in his throat, his lungs. His chest was racked with coughs and white spots danced before his eyes as his lungs strained to drain the thick mixture of the oxygen necessary to fuel his tissues. It was a fight they quickly lost, and in moments Trouble Kelp was sprawled in the floor, quite thoroughly unconscious.

**ooo**

As he'd been adjusting his equipment in the moments immediately following the start of the time-stop, Foaly had soon found his fingers tapping the keys in time to the little ditty that had been stuck in his head since he'd arrived on the surface, an old classic from his school days. The room was presently empty of any of his technical assistance so he made a quick check that his com system was on mute and allowed himself the luxury of singing along with the chorus.

_A Mud Man is as a Mud Man does_

_He loots and he pillages just because_

_He'll steal your gold and he'll pluck your wings_

_And all sorts of other nasty things_

It had quite a few verses. In fact, while Holly and Artemis had been away in limbo, someone had created a new one and it had been making the rounds through Haven. Holly had had a fit the first time she'd walked into the officers' club and heard Commander Kelp leading the troops in a particularly enthusiastic performance of the verse.

_We remember the tale of Artemis Fowl_

_A terror to the People then and now_

_His skin is pale and his eyes like ice_

_He's plenty bright but not very nice_

_And though he was only twelve years old_

_He captured a fairy to steal her gold_

_He escaped from the Recon's bio-bomb_

_And lived to torment us on and on_

_Cuz a Mud Man is as a Mud Man does_...

Of course Foaly didn't know at that moment that someday Doctor Argon would use the song in his book _Fowl and Fairy_ as an example of how the Artemis Fowl myth had taken on a life of its own in popular fairy culture. By the time of the book's publication there were many new verses focussed on Artemis, and several variants of the song that excluded the original verses entirely.

But currently Foaly was busy dealing with the latest Fowl-centric crisis. He had to keep a close eye on the readings to make sure the time-field held steady. If there were going to be any glitches, they would appear in those first moments, so it was only natural that he turn his attention away from Artemis and Holly's iris-cam feeds. When he felt certain that the time-field was stable he glanced back at the feed in time to see the Mud Men strapping primitive gas masks onto their captives' faces.

"D'Arvit!"

His fingers flew over the keys, tapping into the shuttle sensors to perform an analysis of the ambient gasses in the area of the burial mound. Nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide. At first it seemed normal but then his computer blipped as the sensors noticed something anomalous. A synthetic amidst the naturally occurring gasses. He started at it a moment: C22 H28 N2O. Human-made according to the database, a gaseous derivative of fentanyl, a narcotic analgesic, one hundred times more powerful than morphine. The original was meant for medical procedures but as a gas it was used to incapacitate and could cause severe respiratory distress.

His heart lurched as he realized that the Retrieval team would already be advancing on the burial mound. "Retrieval One! Get your filters on!" The filters on the LEP helmets were designed to filter out pollution but they could be tuned to remove specialized chemical compounds in an emergency. The problem was that they were removable and since most fairies loved surface air and wearing the filters was not necessary according to regulations, most of the officers didn't bother.

"Retrieval One, do you read?" he said again as his fingers raced to send the fentanyl formula to the helmets' built-in computers. He spared a few milliseconds to tune in to Retrieval One's camera feeds only to see them moving down the passageway as if they hadn't even heard him.

And then it dawned on Foaly. "D'Arvit," he swore as he punched the button to un-mute his mic... just in time to watch the members of Retrieval One collapse in a fit of hacking and gasping.

What was worse was the realisation that the chemical makeup of the air in all the outbuildings was changing as well.

"Commander, you need to–"

"What's going on with Retrieval One, Foaly? What readings are you getting from their suits?"

"You need to get out of there. The ventilation system is..."

He trailed off as the commander's channel was filled with the sounds of violent coughing. When he glanced up, he could see a thick vapouring pouring from a vent in the ceiling above him. But no sooner had he seen it than he could feel his own lungs struggling to draw air and within moments he was slumped over his console.


	8. No Rest for the Wicked

**Chapter Eight: No Rest for the Wicked**

The gas hung thick in the air like smoke, pouring in from the canisters. It was only a matter of seconds before the sound of coughing began to echo through the chamber. Apparently the captors and their hostages were not the only ones inside the passage tomb.

"It sounds like we've got visitors," noted Kronski. He, like the others, still wore his mirrored glasses beneath his mask. They knew about the _mesmer_ and how to avoid it. This was information they should only have had if they'd gained access to the Fairy Book as Artemis himself had all those years ago... or if they'd received the information directly from a fairy.

"What have you done?" Holly yelled, her voice seeming distant through the filter of her gas mask. She strained against her bonds and Artemis noted the drops of blood that spattered the stone floor, slowly draining her of her magic. Their captors had not noticed – or if they had they did not realize that a puncture or a series of small scrapes and cuts could drain a fairy dry of all her magic.

"Nothing permanent," Kong said. And then, with a sneer, "Probably."

After a minute or so, the echoes of hacking and coughing were replaced by gasps and raspy breathing. Kong, weapon drawn, darted a glance down the passageway and then nodded to the others.

"All right, I'm shutting it down," Spiro said. "Moving on to phase two." He tapped at the screen on his Blackberry a few times, his gold bracelets jangling when he replaced it in the pocket of his linen pants. "Sweet dreams, little fairies."

And instantly Artemis understood. When again he heard the hiss of gas, his suspicions were confirmed.

"Holly, calm down," Artemis said in Gnommish.

"Calm, Artemis? You want me to stay calm?"

Artemis winced. Even through the mask he recognised that tone. It was one that often preceded explosions, literal or metaphorical. "Yes. They are not going to harm your comrades. Having incapacitated them, they are now going to put them to sleep."

Her eyes widened as understanding dawned on her. "D'arvit!"

Somehow, these men had known about the time-stop and prepared for it just as Artemis had six years ago. Yet they did not intend to escape it. The initial release of gas– which he could only assume had been spread through other parts of the compound as well – had been meant to incapacitate the fairies. Though one could not fall asleep during a time-stop, one could be rendered unconscious, which represented a different state of consciousness than sleep. Though the two were often confused in the popular vernacular (hence "sleeping gas" instead of the more appropriate "knockout gas"), sleep had very particular brainwave activity whereas unconsciousness was a state characterised by lack of responsiveness to stimuli. Being rendered unconscious did not remove you from the time-field. That was why, during the Fowl Manor siege, Butler had been able to confront the team of armed fairies, knocking several unconscious, without removing them from the time-field and giving away Artemis's plan.

The second gas began to seep into the chamber, mixing with the initial one and Artemis hoped they had taken into account the possibility of chemical interactions between them. "This may take a little longer," Spiro announced. "Check the security cameras for the rest of the facility and do a head count to make sure we got them all."

It took the better part of an hour, but finally the sounds of laboured breathing from down the passageway disappeared one by one. Kong, who'd been going through the security camera images on a laptop, turned to Spiro and Kronski. "That's the last of them."

The second gas had done its work. It had eased the incapacitated fairies from a state of unconsciousness to normal sleep, thus expelling them from the time-field. Now the seven of them in this chamber were the only ones who remained. Spiro, Kong, and Kronski had successfully taken over the time-field.

Artemis's gaze met Holly's. They were on their own.

**ooo**

Trouble Kelp groaned. His head throbbed like there was a Dwarf Metal rock concert going on somewhere in his cerebellum. Wincing as he opened his eyes and light stabbed at his optical nerves, he took a deep breath and managed to croak out, "What's our status?"

"You're at the Tara medical facility, Commander. You were evac'ed here from Newgrange along with most of your team for severe respiratory distress. Mud Men gasses can be very hard on the system even if your magic's topped up."

Ignoring the throbbing in his skull when he titled his head, Trouble glanced up to see a medical warlock looming over him. "We've got to get back there so Foaly can let us back into the time field."

"Not going to happen, Commander."

Trouble's brow creased. That was Foaly's voice. "Foaly?" Trouble tapped his ear piece. "How are you communicating through the time field."

Foaly snorted. "I'm not _in_ the time field."

Trouble titled his head the other way, and after the pounding slowed and the white spots cleared from his vision, he found himself staring across at the peculiar sight of a very long centaur draped over a rather short examination table. He looked a little green and quite a bit dishevelled. "Oh," Trouble replied, which was about as articulate as he was going to get just at that moment.

After the medical warlock had doused him with an extra few shots of magic, he felt well enough to sit up and holler for an update from his backup team who'd been outside the time field. A corporal arrived shortly thereafter and gave him the report. "We've managed to camouflage or remove all of the equipment, sir. The Mud Men won't even know it's there. We also managed to set up a hologram around the access panel to the lower level. We're checking out the area now."

Trouble frowned. "The Mud Men got into the building's subterranean rooms? How did they even know about them?"

The corporal shrugged. "Maybe Captain Short mentioned them?"

"She wouldn't." Shaking his head, Trouble tried to make sense of the situation. The Mud Men had known not only about his team, but that putting them to sleep would remove them from the time field. They must have had inside information. "How long until the time field collapses?"

"About an hour, sir."

"Commander?" A voice came through his earpiece. "Commander, this is Private Speedwell. We've got Captain Short."

Trouble sprang to his feet. "Report!" he barked into his mic.

"We were investigating the subterranean rooms and she was there on the floor – just waking up."

"What's her condition?"

"Groggy, but fine, sir."

"I want her brought to Tara immediately. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir!"

Trouble had to pull rank to get the warlocks to allow him to leave the medical facility but they had the rest of his team to take care of so they finally relented. He waited impatiently for the shuttle to arrive and when it landed, rushed out to meet his officers.

Private Speedwell escorted Holly from the shuttle, keeping a close eye on her, as she looked rather wobbly in the knees. Her features were pale and drawn. "Holly," Trouble said warmly, "good to see you in once piece." She only nodded in response. "We'll have the medical warlocks take a look at you in a minute, but I need a full report first." He turned to the private. "Speedwell, go tell the doctors they've got another patient on the way."

"Yes, sir." He turned to go but then hesitated. He gestured towards the shuttle."I need to return the–"

"Give it to me," Trouble said. "I'll take care of it." Speedwell handed him the starter chip for the shuttle and Trouble pocketed it as the private headed towards the medical ward. The starter chip would need to be returned to the lockup, but for now he wanted to hear what Holly had to say. "All right, Holly, tell me what happened. How did you get escape the time field?"

"I simply loosened my bonds enough to partially remove my gas mask and allow the analgesic gas to take effect."

Trouble peered at her for a moment, wondering if she'd gotten a concussion when she'd passed out. "How did you end up in the subterranean chambers?"

"Our captors relocated us there several hours into the time-stop."

"And what about Fowl?"

Holly's face twitched slightly at the name and Trouble began worrying about the effect of the gas. The doctors had said something about possible side effects on the nervous system, hadn't they? "What about him?" she snapped.

"What happened to him?"

"I'm not in the time-stop, am I? How could I have any idea what happened to him? Why must people insist on asking such insipid questions?"

"That's no way to speak to you commanding officer, Captain."

She sniffed. "Do you have the starter chip for this shuttle?"

"What?"

"It's a simple question, _Commander_." She drawled his rank as if it were something distasteful to pronounce. "Surely even your mind can comprehend it."

This well nigh amounted to insubordination but he was too worried by this point to be angry. "Yes, I've got the chip," he said in the calm, even sort of tone one might use when confronted with a wild animal. "Now I think we should get you the medical ward so the warlocks can take a look at you, Holly. All right?" He reached out to squeeze her shoulders as he said it but his hands were met with the oddest sensation – as if he were gripping a wet sponge.

"Unhand me, you imbecile!" shrieked the fairy in front of him. It was Holly's image but not her voice. A high, grating voice that was somehow familiar. He blinked once, confused, and the image of Holly flickered out of existence to be replaced by a pixie with black hair and wild, brown eyes.

Trouble's jaw dropped. So did his hand, towards his sidearm, but all he got out was, "Opal K–" before a bolt of magical energy struck him in the chest and knocked him clear across the room.

Opal swayed, still not fully recovered from her ordeal. Even the effort of maintaining that

shape-shifting spell had been draining. Cursing her luck, she crossed the room and took the starter chip from Trouble's pocket.

She made quick work of stealing the shuttle and leaving the Tara base far, far behind her.

**ooo**

"Foaly, do you read me?" Holly said when the echoes of their captors' footfalls had faded away. "Please respond. Foaly?" She paused for a moment waiting for an answer, but finally she shook her head. "So, Artemis," Holly began, "do you have a plan B?" There was more than a little sarcasm in her tone.

Artemis took a deep breath, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to concentrate on their situation... rather than on the image of that bright red four which was still staring at him from the screen across the room. With himself, Holly, and the twins, there were four of them in the room ... four united together in death.

"Artemis? Please tell me there's a plan B."

"If Commander Kelp had taking my warning seriously that there is fairy involvement in this scheme he would have taken more precautions."

"Trouble is never going to take you seriously."

Reflections bounced off the mask's plastic surface, but Artemis peered through it to catch her eye. "And he would allow his dislike of me to cloud his judgment?"

Holly shrugged. "He's an elf. Elves are – we don't always think with our heads," she said, glancing away from him.

And in spite of the ache in his shoulders, the knot of worry in his belly, and the taunting of the red four on the screen, a smile crept onto Artemis's lips. "Yes, I _had_ noticed."

"We can't all be centaurs and evil geniuses."

Artemis winced as he could almost feel Orion squirming in the depths of his mind. He could just imagine the fool making some honeyed response, perhaps something along the lines of, "But you, fair lady, are perfect just as you are!" And then perhaps he'd go on to elaborate on how she was the epitome of beauty, perhaps composing an impromptu sonnet on the subject or even an epic as he had two weeks ago when he'd began a recitation in iambic parameter that praised the individual parts of her anatomy. Holly had turned on her heel and left his room before he'd gotten past her eyebrows.

He turned to glance in his brothers' directions at the sound of Beckett's voice. "Tummy hurts, Artemis?"

"You do look a little green," Holly noted. "Is it..."

And there again was that look of concern on her features where only a few moments ago she'd looked to him for tactical leadership. He could not even function properly in his normal role, and increasingly concern was the expression he glimpsed on the faces of those closest to him. Even after his attempts to change his life, to make up for past errors, he still managed to hurt those who cared for him. "The medication is wearing off."

Further discussion was cut short by the sound of approaching footsteps. Spiro, still donning his gas mask, appeared hefting a case in each hand. He set them down at the far end of the chamber. Artemis craned his neck to watch as he opened the cases and began assembling a device, possibly some form of solid-state laser. Spiro flashed a grin as he noticed Artemis watching. "I brought along a little something I've been working on. State of the art! I'd patent it... if I weren't officially dead."

By the time he was done, Artemis's neck ached, but he was certain that the contraption was indeed a laser cutting device, though he had to admit he was impressed by the compact design.

Artemis grimaced when Spiro activated the laser and it began cutting an incision into the floor of the chamber. "Defacing world heritage sites? You've sunk to a new low, Spiro."

"You keep your trap shut if you know what's good for you. I'm sure Kong wouldn't mind having a little fun with you ahead of schedule."

"Doubtless. In the meantime, I'm afraid I need to use the facilities."

Spiro shot him a scathing look but got up. "All right, Arty, but no schemes or we take it out on your siblings. Same goes for the everyone else. Got it?"

"Of course." Artemis turned in his brothers' direction. They remained bound in the corner, unnaturally calm thanks to the influence of the _mesmer_. He caught Myles's eye. "You heard him, Myles. Watch what the man says before your number is up."

Myles nodded rapidly, biting his lip.

Spiro leaned down to punch a series of numbers into the keypad on Artemis's restraints. The digital cuffs clicked open and slowly Artemis moved his arms, wincing as pain shot through his shoulders from the hours of confinement. Spiro was watching him expectantly as he rose to his feet. "Well, get on with it."

Artemis rolled his eyes. "I'm not about to void my bladder inside a neolithic monument, Mr. Spiro."

"Fine then, but hurry up." Spiro grabbed him by the elbow and shoved him ahead along the passageway. A few minutes later they returned to the chamber and Artemis was promptly cuffed to the chair once again. He was reassured, however, when he saw that Myles was smiling.


	9. Descent

**Chapter Nine: Descent**

There was little chance to talk as Spiro kept watch on the laser cutter's progress while Kronski and Kong busied themselves by setting up a winch next to the area being excavated. Artemis monitored the proceedings, though it meant being forever aware of the unwavering gaze of the scarlet four still flickering on the tiny screen across the room.

As they proceeded, Artemis tried to work out, from his admittedly limited knowledge of fairy physiology, how long it would take for the LEP officers who'd been in the time-field to wake up. His best estimate was that they would likely only awaken an hour or so before the time-field collapsed. There was no way to re-enter the time field without someone inside allowing them to and even if there were, by the time they recovered from the analgesic gas there would be precious little chance for them to contain the situation. No, the LEP would no longer be any help at all. He and Holly were utterly on their own.

It was a full two hours before Spiro shut down the beam from the cutter and allowed his associates to use the winch to heft away the block of stone roughly the size of manhole cover. The winch groaned in protest for a few moments but then raised the block. Kronski tapped at its controls, so that it slowly moved the block away and then dropped it onto the stone floor nearby.

Spiro was peering into the gap left by the block. "Looks like our information was right. We've hit paydirt."

Craning his neck, Artemis could make out the tail of a triple spiral, but unlike those carved outside the tomb or within the chamber, this one was fashioned of symbols – symbols he recognised as an ancient form of Gnommish, much like the spiralling characters in the Fairy Book.

Kong raked his fingers through his spiked hair. "Well get on with it then. We don't have all night."

With a chuckle Kronsiki checked his watch. "In fact, Mister Kong, we do have all night and a few extra hours besides."

"Just open the damned hatch," Kong snarled.

Spiro's pale fingers moved over the stonework touching the Gnommish letters in a precise sequence, though from where he was sitting, Artemis could not make out any details. With a grating sound, the stone slab drew back into the ground revealing a stairway that slanted down into the earth.

"All right, gentlemen, time to get to work," Spiro announced, gold bracelets jangling as he clasped his hands together.

Kronski eyed the passageway with obvious trepidation, which did not go unnoticed by Kong. "Might want to suck it in, it's gonna be a tight fight," Kong said, smirking.

"Mind your own affairs. I'm concerned about how we'll get the equipment down."

"'Course. Worried about the equipment."

Spiro stood, brushing off the knees of his now sullied white suit. "Would you two just cut it out and get to work."

Kong snorted. "You may have been a bigshot back in Chicago, Spiro, but here you're just one of the boys. No giving orders, remember?"

For a moment Spiro looked about to reply, but instead he only shrugged and made his way out of the passage tomb. Over the course of the next hour the men moved in and out of the tomb carrying cases of equipment and then disappearing down the stairway for fifteen minutes at a stretch, but as the chamber was never empty for more than a few minutes at a time, Artemis and the others remained silent.

It was only when he finally counted all three men belowground that Artemis spoke. "Holly, you said that this site had extensive underground facilities. What's likely to be left belowground?"

She shook her head. "It could be anything really. The surface site's been abandoned for millennia but it's not impossible that the tunnels have seen more recent usage – say in the past few centuries."

"There could be fairy technology down there?"

"Possibly. Normally if a sealed tunnel is accessed, a signal is sent to Police Plaza so the LEP can check it out but with the time-stop in place..."

More evidence that this had all been planned in advance by someone with detailed knowledge of the People. His brothers had been the bait for him, and he and Holly had been the bait for the LEP.

"And be careful with that transmitter." Spiro's voice echoed hollowly from the stairway.

"What did I say about giving orders, Spiro?" returned Kong.

The two men emerged into the chamber, the taller Kong, pausing to stretch and groan. "Why did they have to make the ceiling so damned low?" he grumbled, rubbing at his lower back.

Spiro huffed and cast a glance in Holly's direction. "Have you taken a look at your 'demons', Kong? They're midgets."

"You're one to talk," Kong shot back and then stalked out of the chamber.

When Kronski appeared some moments later, Spiro was still fuming. "That Kong is a loose cannon."

Kronski shrugged. "But useful nonetheless. All you have to do is make sure he's pointed in the right direction when he goes off."

Artemis waited for the echoes of their footfalls to fade before he turned to his brother. "Myles, you have it?"

Myles, nodded. "Have it."

"What does he have?" Holly said.

Artemis smiled his vampire smile. "Why the code to our cuffs of course."

Surprise flashed across her features but then she smiled too. "_Watch_ what the man says before your _number_ is up," she said repeating Artemis's earlier words, and shaking her head in apparent disbelief. She turned her smile onto Myles. "You were able to figure out that Artemis wanted you to watch Spiro undo the cuffs just from that?"

Myles nodded vigorously. "Simple." And then, in a conspiratorial tone, "Artemis simple-toon." Holly stifled a laugh, her lips twitching as she caught Artemis's eye.

"I can, in fact, hear you, Myles," he said. "It's my mind I've lost not my hearing. Now, what's the code?"

"Two, five, six."

Artemis's heart lurched and a cold sweat began to bead his brow. He licked his lips, which felt suddenly dry as his breath came in quick gasps. "Artemis, what is it?"

"Two hundred and fifty-six," he murmured by way of explanation.

Holly's mouth opened but then understanding dawned on her features. "Four to the power of four."

He shuddered just to hear her say it. "We must get out of here. If we can simply avoid our captors until the time-stop runs out then we'll be able to foil their plans without even needing to confront them."

"Artemis..." Holly's voice was once again filled with concern for him. He was quickly becoming worse than useless; if the Atlantis Complex took hold he would become a liability.

_Focus! You must focus!_

"We have the code," he announced, though even he heard the slight quaver in his voice. "Now it's just a matter of sliding our chairs towards my brothers so that they can input the code and–"

"Free!" Beckett announced as the ropes that had bound his hands fell away and he bounced to his feet, a pocket knife clutched in his small fist. Grinning, he began sawing away at Myles's restraints.

"Beckett," Artemis said, at once amused and distressed by the sight of the toddler wielding a sharp object, "I don't believe mother would have given you that as a present. Where did you get it?"

Beckett beamed. "From spiky man's pocket."

"Well done," Artemis said admiringly.

"I can see the family resemblance," Holly noted.

Artemis flashed an incisor. "We are Fowls, after all. Guile runs in the family."

Freed from his restraints, Myles approached Artemis and keyed in the three digit code on the digital cuffs. Artemis's skin crawled. Two hundred and fifty-six. Four times four, repeated four times. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to ignore the dance of fours spiralling before his mind's eye. His hands were trembling as the cuffs dropped away.

"My turn," Holly announced. "Can you help me too, Myles?" Artemis was grateful that he would be spared having to input the code himself, but surely that had been Holly's intention. She must already suspect his rapidly decreasing lucidity, that soon he would turn into little more than a ranting madman, useless to her in a tactical situation, a danger to herself and to his brothers' safety. A liability. A burden. A threat.

No sooner were her feet on the ground than Holly took charge of the situation. "Our best bet right now is to head underground. We have a better chance of holding them off below than out there."

"Agreed," Artemis said with a nod.

Holly hesitated a moment. "I don't suppose you still have any of your hypershots?"

His hand darted into the pockets of his jeans, just to be certain, but Kong had frisked them both when they'd been unconscious, and the shots were indeed gone. "I'm afraid this is all that remains." His hands emerged with a handkerchief and what appeared to be a ball point pen, the very one Butler had brought him just yesterday.

"I'll take point. Beckett and Myles, you two follow me, and Artemis can bring up the rear."

As the others moved out, Artemis paused to snatch up the Blackberry that Spiro had left on the ledge of rock. He pressed the off button, to finally banish the glowering red four and then stuffed the device into his pocket.

They made a strange party as they headed down the spiral stairway: an elf, two toddlers, and a potentially deranged adolescent. The steps were narrower than was comfortable for Artemis, though Holly and the twins looked perfectly at their ease. As they moved downward, they were encased by stone: to the right, a wall of smooth, sandy-coloured stone, to the left, the central pillar of the stairway.

_Thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty seven..._

Artemis's brow was slick with sweat as he realized that he could not keep himself from counting the steps and that his most pressing concern at this moment was not whether Kong and the others would follow them... but whether the total number of stairs was a multiple of four.

Ahead of him, Holly moved down the steps with confidence, as if she knew where they were headed. And what if she did? What if she had engineered all this somehow, a kidnapping of her own in order to repay him for abducting her six years ago?

He switched to counting in fives in an attempt to steady himself.

_Forty-five... fifty... Holly is your friend and your closest ally in this debacle. Fifty-five._

But perhaps she had been manipulated. Perhaps she was a pawn in someone else's plot. Perhaps the LEP had finally decided to be rid of him. They could be using Holly to get to him. She would not even know it until it was too late. Certainly Commander Kelp had been openly hostile towards him and there was the matter of that date he'd gone on with Holly. What if the Commander could employ runes like those Turball had used? Holly would be Trouble's puppet. Every word she said would be suspect, every action.

_Seventy... Seventy-five._

"I never did ask, Holly, how _did_ you date with Commander Kelp go?"

Holly's steps faltered and she stopped to stare askance at him over her shoulder. "Is this really the time?"

"And what was the commander's major?"

"His major?"

"In university. Did it have anything to do with runes, by chance?"

Holly goggled at him. "Artemis, get a grip. This is not the time to lapse into paranoia."

"Why are you so defensive?" he shot back. "It's a simple question."

"It went _fine_. He majored in Atlantian security protocols. And, Artemis... _focus_."

Apparently Holly still had a few sparks of magic left in her system, for her voice was layered with the tones of the _mesmer_ as he stared into her eyes. Yet the command seemed to help clear his mind. He shuddered and shut his eyes for a moment. When he opened them he was himself once more. At least for the moment.

"My apologies, Holly. I'm afraid without my medication my thinking is a bit... erratic."

"Hang in there. Just a few more hours and the time-stop will collapse and the LEP will come for us."

_Or for you, in any case._ But he thought better than to say that aloud.

With step number one hundred and five, they reached the bottom of the stairwell and found themselves in a domed gallery, dimly lit by what looked like a primitive version of the sun strips used to imitate daylight in Haven City. Carved into the walls at regular intervals were triple spirals. At the far end of the room was a door on which he could make out in Gnommish letters the words "employees only."

They moved carefully around the equipment Kong and the others had brought down. In addition to the canisters of knockout gas and sleeping gas, which had been cleared out of the burial chamber, were pieces of fairy telecommunications equipment, the very equipment the LEP had used to start up the time-stop. Artemis found himself wincing at the asymmetrical placement and tried to focus his attention on the room itself. Where footprints had cleared away the layers of sandy dust, the floor glittered, a smooth, pale stone, flecked with silver. At the far end of the room was a bar with a few remaining stools, toppled over and missing some of their legs. The club's spiral logo had been carved into the stone in intricate patterns. A glint from above caught his eye. He peered up and noticed what looked like deep veins of crystal inlaid into the stone at regular intervals between the sun strips.

"Interesting," he said in a hush tone. "Do you know anything about these?" he asked Holly.

She craned her neck for a moment and then shrugged. "Part of the club's light show maybe?"

"You said they had a special light show during winter solstice?"

"So they say," she replied abselntly as she moved to scout the room, her hand darting to her hip where, under normal circumstances, she would have carried her Neutrino.

Artemis pulled the Blackberry from his pocket and began scanning through the various applications until he found the one Spiro had showed off earlier. He adjusted the direction of one of the spotlights in the chamber above until a shaft of multicoloured light shot through the ceiling. Holly spun on her heel, body tensed. "It's all right," Artemis assured, holding up the Blackberry. "I was testing a theory."

"At a time like this?"

He nodded and continued to adjust the lights above so that the beam below moved through the colour spectrum. "The crystals in the ceiling are to capture the light that enters the chamber on the solstice to produce particular lighting effects."

Holly rolled her eyes and continued to investigate their surroundings. Myles was peering up at the crystals on the ceiling while Beckett put his hand into the beam of light, appearing delighted at seeing its hue appear on his palm. Artemis adjusted the settings, causing the light to wink out and be replaced by another several feet away, this one yellow in colour and at a different angle, catching Beckett in the face. Becket squinted and moved out of the light, backing up into an empty canister of gas and causing a bang that echoed through the cavernous room.

"Can't you oafs work more quietly?" shrieked a shill voice from the other side of the "employees only" door. "This work is delicate!"

The voice was one Artemis knew far too well. Opal Koboi.

**ooo**

"And then, convinced that we'd stolen all her truffles, she opened the shielded box and found the armed charges," said the image of Holly Short.

"And then boom!" said the interviewer, his hands moving apart quickly, miming an explosion.

Holly nodded. "She and her accomplices–"

"The Brill brothers."

"Yes. They managed to eject themselves from the shuttle. It was all thanks to Artemis's plan of course."

"I guess that settles the question of which evil geniuses is smarter."

Grating her teeth, Opal Koboi stabbed the off button and the recording died away just as the interviewer smiled a smarmy smile. She'd made a point of watching every interview done with that wretched elf, and reading every file on the Artemis Fowl incidents, and it had been the most foul research project she had ever had to complete.

"How did she ever fall for that?" Opal grumbled as she returned to the task of writing a complex string of code, her finger tapping furiously at her v-board. Oh yes, since being stranded in the future – _her_ future – she had made a careful study of the eight years she had missed. She did not at all care for what she'd learned. Somehow, against all logic and laws of probabilities, her future self had become a complete and utter incompetent.

Her plans to take control of Haven City had been foiled by a Mud Boy and a pair of LEP officers. Humiliating! Even her plans for revenge had been turned into a hopeless mess. How hard was it to simply make your enemies suffer and die a painful death?

_It must be that centaur's fault. Clearly at some point in my future I am apprehended and Foaly mindwipes me with no regard for possible cerebral degradation._

Yes, that would have to be it. A block mindwipe that had caused a drop in her IQ. That was the only explanation for the way her future self had turned into such a bumbling ninny.

There would be time to come up with a suitable punishment for that centaur. In the meantime there was the more pressing matter of Artemis Fowl.

Opal switched to another recording, this one more recent and drawn from the human media. A Mud Man reporter stood outside an R&D facility with a fellow in a lab coat. "The BHS satellite is being called a new world wonder by the scientific community. The rest of us are just calling it one Big Honkin' Satellite," the reporter said with a chuckle. He held out a primitive microphone to the man next to him. "So when is the new satellite due to go live?"

The scientists pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "The BHS – Broadcast Hub Satellite – will be in position on December twentieth and begin broadcasting by noon Greenwitch mean time the next day. Once it's operational it will render obsolete sixty-seven percent of the satellites currently orbiting the earth."

"So by sending this one up you're reducing global clutter," suggested the reporter as he straightened his tie and looked pleased with himself.

"In a manner of speaking," replied the scientist. "It's highly advanced and will be used as a central hub of telecommunication signals."

Opal rolled here eyes. Advanced. She had built a more sophisticated satellite as a science project when she'd been a toddler. Hacking into the device would be simple enough. It was only a matter of creating a strong enough power surge to override its systems just as it went operational, when it would be most vulnerable. The time-stop had given her the chance to tap into the facility's old power cells, which had been left intact, without alerting the LEP to her activities. Once the time-field dropped she would break into the satellite's system and she would have control of sixty-seven percent of the world's telecommunications – not a bad audience for her little show.

And a fine show it would be, featuring the oh-so-famous Captain Holly Short, broadcast worldwide on TV, radio and internet for the human race's viewing pleasure. The intrepid captain would be the means of Opal's revenge on Artemis Fowl.

_Artemis Fowl_. She'd made a careful study of him and what fun reading the most recent information had been. The Atlantis Complex – how perfect! The thought of her enemy slowly descending into madness made her feel positively giddy. As soon as she'd learned of it she'd decided she simply _had_ to help it along. And she knew just how to do it. After all, he had a weakness.

Leaning back in her work chair, Opal stretched her arms out and flexed each of her digits one by one. A smile curled her lips as she glanced over at the e-pad that had been her bedtime reading these past few months. Ah, Doctor Argon, her future therapist, had such a lovely way of writing up patient files. Artemis's had certainly made for entertaining reading.

Yes, Artemis had a weakness; he valued his family. Above even gold if the LEP's case reports were any indication – though considering the barely literate LEP peons who wrote the reports, their reliability was, of course, in doubt. However, the reports indicated that at age twelve, Artemis Fowl had traded half a ton of metric gold for the healing of his mother and, some six months later, had offered his assistance to the LEP in return for the rescue of his father. Argon's files further indicated that it was Artemis's guilt over his mother's condition, while Opal had possessed her, that had brought on the Atlantis Complex.

Opal delighted in the fact that she had played a role in the onset of his lunacy. She relished the thought that her revenge had begun to be exacted the very moment she had required vengeance! All he needed now was a little nudge. Placing his most vulnerable family members in danger and forcing him to once again abduct Captain Short and betray the People should be just what he needed. And if she could employ his old enemies to do it, all the better! It would be that much more effective.

Recruiting the three humans had been a simple matter of hacking and _mesmerizing_, nothing she couldn't hadle herself, though healing the sickly Spiro had been a bothersome use of her magical energy. Mud Man computer systems were so primitive their security offered no challenge at all. Faking someone's death or engineering a prison riot were amusing, but far too easy to satisfy an intellect like her own. Still, in a few hours, all her efforts would be rewarded.

Satisfied that her fingers were lithe and limber again, she placed them once more on her v-pad and prepared to write the final strings of code. Now if those Mud Men she'd recruited would hurry and set up the equipment she needed to enhance the signal, everything would work out just–

She jerked up in her seat as a clatter echoed through the cavernous room just outside the door to her work area. _Ruined! My concentration is ruined!_ She would have to begin her stretches all over again.

"Can't you oafs work more quietly?" she yelled over her shoulder. "This work is delicate!"

Sighing, she returned to stretching her fingers. It would not do to develop muscle cramps at this point in the operation. She almost missed the Brill brothers. Honestly it was so difficult to find reliable help these days.


	10. A Shocking Development

**Chapter Ten: A Shocking Development**

"Wonderful," Holly groaned as she crouched next to Artemis and his siblings behind a pair of heavy-duty transmitters. "We have three cold-blooded killers behind us and Opal Koboi in front of us. This plan of yours is turning out brilliantly, Arty." Myles peered at Holly, head titled slightly to one side. Perhaps he found it peculiar that someone other than their parents – and their captors, Artemis supposed – should use that pet name, but then Artemis himself had been surprised at first. He tried not to think of the circumstances under which she'd _begun_ using it.

Ignoring the sweat beginning to bead his brow and the sudden urge to tap his foot, Artemis tried to focus on the Blackberry and the commands he was typing into it. "All is not lost, Holly. Have faith."

She peered at him, her air more than a little incredulous. "You have a new plan?"

"Yes."

"Am I going like this plan?"

He paused and looked at her. "Do you normally like my plans?"

"I do when they keep us alive."

"In that case you'll be thrilled." He continued to tap the Blackberry's keypad, making sure the programming worked according to the proper parameters.

"We don't have all day," Holly hissed. "Eventually Kong and the others will notice we're gone or Opal will come out of her hiding place and we're unarmed."

"Please, Holly, I _need_ to concentrate."

Her lips thinned to a line but she crossed her arms and held her tongue. Thankfully so did the twins, who remained calmer that was natural for them thanks to Holly's earlier use of the _mesmer_. Artemis was so absorbed in his work that he all but lost track of time. His work become more challenging as he continued; his gut twisted every time he had to input a four and he found himself murmuring round numbers under his breath. But he steeled himself and tried to ignore the worried look on Holly's face as she watched him.

When he was finally done, he reviewed his work once and then nodded in satisfaction. "There. It's finished." And all at once he could not resist. "Completely finished." Five words. Much better. "I am ready now, Holly."

"Are you counting your words?" Holly's brow crinkled. "And did you just use my name as filler?"

He cleared his throat. "I apologise. Without my medication..." Reaching into his jeans, he pulled out the ballpoint pen and stood, backing up a few paces from Holly and his brothers.

"Artemis, what are you doing?"

"I never did have the opportunity to show you this." _Ten._ He held up the pen. He had tried to explain earlier, at the clinic, but perhaps it had been for the best that Mulch had interrupted when he had. "It was meant as a control measure should my hold on sanity begin to slip." _Fifteen._ He could feel it slipping away, faster than the remaining hours of the time-stop.

"Artemis..." Holly said, rising to her feet. He took a step back.

"Butler was reluctant but finally he did see the logic and acquired it for me." _Fifteen. Very good._ He pushed the button and instead of the tip of a pen, electricity sparked from its end. A portable, cleverly-disguised taser. Just what he needed in a worst case scenario.

"Artemis, don't do anything rash." He smiled. Five words. He liked five. It was a good, safe number.

"I am very sorry, Holly. I'm afraid you will need better help than I can provide in my current state."

And then, gritting his teeth, he pressed the button of the pen and jabbed the sparking tip of it into his belly.

Electricity sparked through him and he crumpled to the floor.

**ooo**

When Orion woke, he found himself staring up into a pair of big hazel eyes, wide with concern – concern that evaporated as soon as he opened his mouth. "Ah, fair damsel, it is a pleasure to gaze once more into the depth of your lovely eyes."

Holly huffed and turned to Myles and Beckett. "He's fine."

"Artemis simple-toon?" Beckett inquired.

Orion rose and, smiling broadly, ruffled his younger sibling's blond curls. "No, my young brother in arms. I am not Artemis, but his much more gracious alter ego, Orion."

"Artemis loony-toon," Beckett concluded, nodding sagely.

Holly groaned. "Maybe you've noticed, but we're in the middle of a crisis, Orion."

"Of course, my lady. I am fully apprised of the situation and ready to take action. Artemis may be a boor, but I can see that his plan is a sound one, worthy of our joint desire to protect our brothers and your most treasured self."

As she crossed her arms over her chest, Holly looked less than reassured. "And are you planning to let me in on this plan?" But even as she spoke, the sound of rapid footfalls began to echo in the domed room, coming from the stairwell along with the sound of voices, garbled by the echoes. "D'Arvit!"

"There is no time," Orion said. "Only remember to keep your gas masks on."

They ducked back down behind the transmitters and a few moments later their captors had reached the bottom of the stairwell. The sound of Kronski's laboured breathing filled the room like the panting of a very large dog.

"They have to be down here," Kong said. "I know they didn't get out of that tomb."

"The fairy... has magic," Kronski panted. "She could be invisible."

"But Fowl can't," Spiro shot back. "Now shut up, pudgy, and start looking." If Kronski was offended by the name, he was too busy catching his breath to retort.

"Hey," Kong snapped, "watch it with the orders, Spiro."

"Why don't you–"

Whatever Spiro's suggestion might have been, they never found out as a shrill voice reverberated through the room. "Silence! All of you! Can't you see I'm trying to work?"

Holly's heart lurched when Orion chose that very moment to get to his feet. "Gentlemen, how good to see you," he said. "I thought perhaps you might like to meet your employer."

"Do none of you imbeciles know the meaning of silence?" shrieked Opal Koboi as she threw open the door to her work area and marched into the domed room.

For a moment there was indeed complete silence as the three men stared openly at the pixie. Then Kong spun on Kronski, his eyes wild. "You didn't tell me we were working for one of the demons," he snarled.

"Calm yourself," Kronski said. "Miss Koboi is nothing of the sort. She's simply... simply..."

Opal rolled her eyes and heaved a sigh. "This is what I get for using humans to carry out my plans. So unreliable no matter how many times you _mesmerize_ them."

"Calm?" Kong repeated. "You want me to me be calm? When we're working for _that_?" he said, waving his weapon around.

"I don't care for your tone," Opal noted. Had Kong had a better understanding of what he was dealing with he would perhaps have understood how precarious his situation truly was. Unfortunately for Kong, he did not.

"Why is it today everyone three feet tall thinks they can give me lip?"

Opal's eyes seemed almost to spark. "Such insolence is unacceptable from a Mud Person. You will do as I command," she said, voice layered with the _mesmer_.

"Like hell!" Kong snapped. "It's your fault Eric is dead."

Opal sighed. "Yes of course, the mirrored lenses. I'll have to–"

"That's it, demon. We're going to finish this now." Kong proceeded to make the rather serious mistake of pointing his weapon in Opal's direction. Opal's eyes flared and sparks shot from her hands and struck Kong in the chest, sending the gun skittering across the floor. Holly moved from her hiding place, desperate to get a hold of Orion before he could get himself killed. Kong meanwhile stumbled back against the wall, face pale, but all at once his body went rigid. He stood.

"_Now_," Kong drawled, but the voice was not his. It was Opal, speaking _through_ Kong. She had used her powers to possess him just as she had Angeline Fowl. "Where were we?"

Spiro and Kronski remained frozen in place, staring at the bizarre sight as Kong moved forward with jerky motions. "I see you cretins have allowed our captives to escape." Kong pivoted towards Holly. Her hand moved instinctively to her hip and she cursed under her breath as she remembered that she was unarmed. "Captain Short, I suggest that you put your hands where I can see them or you'll have to use your healing magic on your pet Mud Boy."

A wry smile crept onto Holly's lips. She raised her hands palms outwards. Blood oozed from the puncture on her wrist. "What magic?"

Opal's eyes focussed on the blood and she shrieked. "You have spoiled my beautiful plan!" Holly leaped out of the way as a bolt of magic shot towards her. "Get them!" The words came out in distorted stereo as both Opal and Kong spoke them.

A number of things happened at once. Spiro began backing towards the stairs; Kong advanced on Holly; and Kronski made a run for Orion.

"I didn't sign up for this," Spiro muttered and turned to dash up the stairs, but a bolt of magic caught him in the back before he'd made it more than a few paces.

"Useless," Opal muttered and turned her attention back to controlling Kong who was lunging towards Holly. Kong himself was well versed in martial arts, but Opal's control over him did not extend to his trained reflexes so his attacks were wild and jerky. Holly ducked and bobbed out of the way and then struck him in the back of the leg, forcing his knees to buckle, and then jabbing him in the belly and the ribs. But possessed as he was by Opal, he felt no pain, and simply got back to his feet. Holly tried to move in to knock him down again, but Opal shot off a bolt in her direction and she had to dance away as Kong got back up.

A few paces to the left, Kronski was stalking towards Orion, thick arms outstretched. "Come here, Ah-temis, and I won't have to hurt you."

Kronski was easily three times Orion's mass but Orion held his ground as the larger man barrelled towards him. Artemis had faced Kronski once before and lost. Badly. Artemis had made the fatal mistake of ignoring Butler's advice, of trusting only to his overdeveloped intellect, but Artemis was not the one in control now!

With a deftness that would have surprised Holly had she been in a position to turn around and observe the proceedings, Orion sidestepped Kronski and struck at his face, clipping him soundly on the side of the nose with a satisfying crunch. Kronski howled and clutched at his nose. Orion followed it up by backhanded strike across the throat. Kroski dropped to the floor, making choking sounds, and Orion turned his attention to Holly who was dodging magical bolts and Kong's attacks.

Orion reached into his pocket to retrieve the Blackberry. He keyed in the necessary commands just as Artemis had planned before relinquishing control, and all at once several beams of light shot down from the crystalline veins in the ceiling. He tapped a key on the screen and the light moved to the left. He tapped another and it moved forward. Artemis's programming had made it a simple matter to manipulate the refracted light from the spotlights in the tomb. _Nicely done, Artemis! You are a boor, indeed, but your cleverness is inimitable!_

Sweat beaded Holly's brow as she dodged away from Kong. Nothing she did seemed to have much impact and it was difficult to concentrate on him with the constant threat of being singed by Opal's bolts. She tried to reassure herself that Opal couldn't keep this up for very long, but it wasn't all that comforting. She had just managed to sucker punch Kong when a bolt of magic caught her in the side. It sent her to the floor, knocking the breath out of her and giving her a sound knock on the head as she fell. Struggling for breath through her gas mask, Holly tried to clear the white spots before her eyes so that she could make out Opal. No followup attack came, and as her vision cleared, she saw a beam of brilliant white light lancing down from the ceiling and into Opal's eyes. The pixie shrieked and staggered back, but her control over Kong was broken now and he slumped to the floor in a heap.

"Curse you, Artemis Fowl," Opal yowled as she turned her attention to the young man before her, flickering balls of energy gathering around her arms. "Now you will–"

"Die? Never, foul villain! Not while my lady remains in danger!" He was holding something in his right hand. Holly's eyes widened. It was Kong's gun. He was holding it just as Butler had tried to teach Artemis to, shoulders squared, supporting his right hand with his left.

Opal laughed. "You couldn't shoot straight if your life depended on it," she jeered. And then, her smile widening, "And in fact it does!"

"But I am not Artemis," Orion said with perfect calm. In a flash his hand darted a few centimetres to one side and he pulled the trigger. The bullet struck the nozzle of one of the gas canisters, which began to hiss, and ricocheted into the wall. Immediately Orion's hand was pointed back at Opal.

Opal hesitated: a properly placed bullet could cause serious damage even beyond the power of the strongest magic to repair. "You won't do it," she said. "I've studied your profile – oh you should see it! Doctor Argon has such quaint insights into your condition."

"Artemis has in fact read the good doctor's reports," Orion retorted. "But while I assure you that the doctor is correct that I hold myself to higher ideal than does Artemis, you're mistaken if you believe I'm incapable of violence."

Opal's laugh was high and shrill. "You want me to believe that you'll shoot me with that primitive Mud Man weapon?"

The hissing from the gas canister seemed louder than ever and there was a slight haze between them. Opal coughed.

"Sometimes the protection of high ideals necessitates bloodshed."

A bolt shot out from Opal's palms, striking Orion's weapon so that it flew from his hands and he was knocked onto the floor. Holly tried to right herself as Opal advanced on Orion, but her head was still swimming as she tried to move. Streaks of magical energy crackled up and down Opal's arms as she stood over him. "You have interfered with me for the last time." She coughed again. "If I cannot have your demise broadcast to a global audience then I can at least have the pleasure of charring you to a crisp and feeding your remains to a troll."

"In that case, may I say a few final words?" Opal cleared her throat and then coughed. Orion apparently interpreted this as assent for he turned in Holly's direction. "I only wish to say what a great honour it's been for me to fight alongside my beloved Holly."

"Orion," Holly groaned as she tried once more to get to her feet, making slightly more progress as she managed to get to her hands and knees before the world started to spin. "This isn't the time."

"But this is the perfect time!" Orion insisted. "After all, it's in the direst of circumstances that our truest feelings are always laid bare. Like that time in the gorilla cage when you–"

"_Shut up_!" Holly and Opal shouted in unison, which had the result of making Holly's head spin and sending Opal into a coughing fit.

Opal's eyes widened. "What have you done?" she wheezed. She opened her mouth to speak again, but instead of words, she was racked by another fit of coughing. The sizzling globes of magic gathered around her arms dissolved, and instead blue sparks began to fizz around her mouth and nostrils.

Orion smiled a toothy smile entirely worthy of his alter ego and tapped the face plate of his gas mask. "Knockout gas."

Opal staggered forward as if to reach for the canister, but before she got more than a few paces, her knees buckled and she fell to the floor, gasping and coughing. With great care, Orion stepped around her and made his way to the leaking canister. He checked it and nodded. "There should be just enough left." He then moved to a second canister and pressed the release catch. "Goodnight, Opal. Please do send my best regards to the LEP."

Opal's coughs soon subsided into raspy, laboured breathing. Satisfied that her condition was stable, Orion turned his attention to Holly. "Are you injured?" he asked, kneeling down beside her.

"I'm fine," she snapped as she managed to sit up. She looked over at Opal's prone form and her expression softened as she turned back to Orion. "This was Artemis's plan?"

"More of less. I did have to improvise somewhat." Orion beamed. "Now all we have to do is wait for the effects of the second gas to take hold.

"The second gas? You're going to send her out of the time-stop?"

"Yes. It will lull her to sleep and she shall wake outside the time-field in the midst of your LEP compatriots."

Holly smiled. "Artemis planned all of this, did he?"

Orion nodded. "My alter ego has many failings but his cunning does prove to be useful on occasion. Now if you'll forgive me, my lady, I must check on my siblings."

Myles and Beckett were unharmed and seemed more intrigued by the entire drama than frightened. After that it was only a matter of waiting for the gas to take hold and put Opal to sleep. By the time the pixie winked out of existence, along with the three unconscious Mud Men, Holly's head had finally cleared enough for her to get to her feet and assess the situation. "How much time do we have left?" she asked.

"Less than an hour," Orion replied. "About my brothers... Do you have any magic left at all?"

She knew what he was asking. Holly clicked her neck, searching for those last sparks of magic. Not enough to heal a scrape, but perhaps enough for the _mesmer_, which was the most basic magic of all. She nodded to Orion.

"Myles," he called. "Beckett. Please come here a moment."

The twins came, expressions curious. "Look at me," Holly said, voice layered with the _mesmer_. "I need to talk to you about something." They looked into her hazel eyes, and immediately she had them. "Everything is fine now. As soon as we're out of here you're going to take a nap and when you get home, all you'll remember is that Artemis saved you, all right?

"Artemis and friend," Myles murmured.

Sweat slicked Holly's brow. She was very low magic, almost dry, and even this hint of resistance was difficult to manage. "All right," she agreed gently. "Artemis and his friend saved you. Okay?"

"'Kay," both boys agreed. She released her hold on them. They were clearly tired, but as long as the time-stop remained in effect they would be unable to sleep, so they tucked themselves into a corner and rested while Orion and Holly investigated Opal's workroom. As they moved into Opal's work area they found equipment and the complex strings of code she'd been writing. Holly shook her head. "It looks like she was planning to hijack a satellite feed. She was serious about exposing the People."

"However her plan has been foiled and now your comrades will be able to apprehend her and send her back to where she belongs, is that not so, fair princess?"

Holly snorted. "Would you care to hand over that taser to me?"

"Alas, fair maiden, Artemis was very clear that I should be in charge for the moment while he wrestles with his demons." Orion smiled, though not with the awful cheerfulness that normally characterised his demeanour, Holly thought. "It will give us a few extra moments together before..." He drew himself up. "Well! Let us sally forth back into the main chamber."

Holly stifled a groan. Sally forth? Any moment now he was going to being reciting another one of his odes – she could just feel it.

It was just as they returned to the main room that she felt it, a sort of flicker in the air. Orion reached into his pocket and removed the Blackberry, turning it back to its TV mode. It was working once more and the time in the corner of the screen showed as 9:01. Off in the corner of the room, the twins finally fell into an exhausted doze. They were out of the time-stop.

"Look," Orion said, pointing to the far side of the room.

A beam of light, pale, buttery yellow at first, slanted down from one of the crystalline veins in the ceiling. After a few seconds, it shattered into a rainbow of colours on the dusty stone floor of the dance hall. Another shaft of light followed it, and then another, slowly filling the room with brilliant colour.

"The Solstice light," Holly breathed.

"Yes," Orion, said quietly. "Up above, a shaft of sunlight is slowly creeping through the roof-box of the chamber, along the passageway, to pierce the gloom inside the burial mound. It seems that the floor of the chamber was designed to use that light to put on a special show here, belowground."

For several minutes Holly watched in silence as the light danced across the floor and then slowly receded as, aboveground, the sun continued to rise. Once a year and lasting seventeen minutes, this was a display no one had seen in centuries. She only wished Artemis were the one standing with her now. It was, after all, thanks to him that they were alive to see it.

When the glittering rainbows had faded away, Holly turned to find Orion watching her intently. She scowled at him. "I should try to get in touch with Foaly."

"Before you do, I would like to say a few words."

"We don't have time for poetry, Orion," Holly said. "We need to get your brothers back home and get you back on your medication."

"Please, do hear me out. I'm afraid this may be our final chance to speak together."

Holly rolled her eyes, but something about the soberness of Orion's expression made her uneasy. He was normally more cheerful than a pixie on a happy shot. Her stomach tied itself into knots when Orion knelt so that he could speak to her face to face. For a long moment he only looked at her, leaving her shifting uncomfortably. "Well what is it?"

"No need to be so short, Miss Short – if you'll forgive the pun." But the smile on his lips was wan and did not touch his eyes. "I know Artemis wishes very much that he could be here to speak to you himself."

Holly's elfin ears were tingling – never a good sign! "About?"

"I'm afraid we've come to a joint decision. This entire debacle was the result of Artemis's past actions, and while I myself am an innocent in this, I cannot free myself from Artemis entirely and so must bear the burden of these crimes. It's clear that we can't allow those close to use to continue to suffer due to our actions. There must be an end to this."

"What are you talking about?" Holly said, dread crawling up her spine, making her skin prickle with goosebumps.

"It has been a true delight fighting alongside you. Please accept my most heartfelt thanks for all that you've done for myself and Artemis. And remember that my affection for you remains eternal."

Holly froze as Orion leaned closer and placed a kiss on her forehead. He drew back to look at her for a long moment, smiling. "Goodbye, my beloved." And then his eyes rolled back into his head and he slumped to the floor.

He did not get back up.


	11. Out of Sight, Out of Mind

**Chapter Eleven: Out of Sight, Out of Mind**

"Artemis? Artemis!" Holly dropped to the floor to check her friend's vital signs. He was breathing, his pulse was steady, but after a few moments it was clear that he was unconscious and completely unresponsive. Yet there was no sign of injury and Holly's blood ran cold at the memory of Orion's words.

Holly tensed at the sound of footsteps, wary of meeting Opal again, but instead a pair of LEP officers appeared from the "employee only" room. The first officer appeared puzzled as he saw her. "Captain Short? But I thought you were– Well didn't you get out of the time-stop?"

"What are you talking about?" Holly snapped. "I was stuck for the whole eight hours." She did not like the sound of that one bit, but there were bigger problems at the moment.

An armed Retrieval team set out to return the twins to their home while Holly and Artemis were evacuated to Tara. He looked pale, even for him, and as the shuttle took them back to the medical facility at Tara, Holly could not help but notice how still he lay – he seemed hardly to breathe.

Foaly was there to greet her when they arrived. He seemed none the worse for wear at least. "Did you get Opal?" Holly asked, though already she had a niggling suspicion that something was not quite right.

Foaly's hooves clopped nervously. "Oh right. Well about that..."

Holly groaned. "She got away? Again?"

"There were some... technical difficulties," he said and explained about Opal's using the shape-shifting spell to deceive the Retrieval team and Trouble Kelp to make her escape.

Holly crossed her arms and glowered at Foaly. "You're telling me Trouble can't tell the difference between me and Opal Koboi?"

Foaly shrugged. "They say love is blind, don't they?"

"It was one date, Foaly. _One_," she said, holding up her index finger. "Are you ever going to let that go?"

"Maybe," he replied, stamping a hoof. "If you ever get around to telling me about that alleged moment of passion your shared with Artemis Fowl. Hmm?"

She knew Foaly was trying to keep things light, but the exhaustion of the past days seemed to tackle Holly like a charging bull troll. She'd not slept in thirty-six hours and the image of Artemis lying on the floor, unmoving and unresponsive, was almost too much bear. "About Artemis..."

"We'll get him checked out. Why don't you get some rest? You look like something spit out of a dwarf tunnel."

Holly shook her head and reached for the acorn hanging on a gold chain at her neck. "I need to top up my magic. I'm bone dry. But..." Her eyes turned to the hover stretcher on which Artemis was being carted out of the shuttle.

"We need to do some tests. Go on. He's not going anywhere."

Normally when Holly completed the ritual, even in the slightly watered-down form of using a sealed accord, she felt revitalized, alive with the magic coursing through her veins. There was no rush of joy today, no surge of energy, just the thrum of nerves knotting her stomach more tightly than ever. Orion's final words, the way he'd collapsed, it repeated itself before her mind's eye and she didn't need any tests to confirm what she knew to be true. The Atlantis Complex had progressed to its final stage. Perhaps this was what Opal had been after all along.

When she returned underground and made her way to the Tara medical facility, the look on Foaly's face told her she was right.

"So," she said, "is it..."

Foaly nodded. "Atlantis Complex, final stage. Patient retreats into his own psyche and..." He swished his tail, suddenly awkward. "We've got Haven on the line. Doctor Argon's explaining the situation to... Artemis's family."

Holly steeled herself and marched into the medical ward. A pair of screens had been set up at the end of Artemis's bed. One displayed the image of Doctor Argon. Gathered around the other were Butler, Juliet, and a harrowed-looking Angeline. Off to one side, Trouble stood ramrod straight, arms crossed over his chest, purple eyes fixed on Artemis as if he expected to see him move and prove that this was all an act.

"What are the treatment options?" Butler was saying as she and Foaly came to stand before the screens.

"Treatment?" Argon repeated, shaking his head.

"Surely there must be something." And the tone in which Butler said it made Argon pale and begin to fidget with his e-pad.

"I can prescribe stronger medication but if the trauma of the day's events have caused him to retreat into his own psyche it might not make any difference."

Angeline bit her lip and Juliet moved to squeeze her shoulders.

"What about psychosurgery?" Holly said, her voice hoarse. Her mouth was dry, her palms slick with a cold sweat.

"Preposterous," Argon sputtered. "We'd have to get him back down to the clinic and I'd have to do a thorough examination. By then he'd be too unstable. The final stage progresses rapidly in most cases."

She balled her fists. "We can do it here. Now."

Argon waved a hand dismissively. "I can't establish a mental link from kilometres belowground. There's nothing to be done but administer the drugs and hope for the best."

Holly could feel all eyes turn to her as she spoke. "I can do it."

There was a chorus of "What?" from several quarters, with Argon sounding scandalized, Foaly, exasperated, and Trouble, irate.

"D'Arvit, Holly, you're not–" Trouble began while at the same moment Argon jumped in with, "You haven't been trained to–"

"I can do it," Holly insisted. "I've performed magical surgery before, even delicate work." Her chin jutted out towards the screen. "Butler is proof of that."

"That was different," Foaly said. "It was regular surgery."

"No," Trouble said emphatically, moving to stand before her. "Absolutely not. You can't risk your life to save Artemis Fowl."

"What's that supposed to mean, little fairy?" Juliet said in a low tone.

"Psychosurgery is a delicate procedure," Argon added. "It requires years of training to be able to magically probe a patient's mind without causing harm. And with an unstable patient it's a risk to the surgeon's own life. You could get sucked into his psychosis and wind up a drooling vegetable."

"I know Artemis better than anyone," Holly said. For a moment, Angeline looked as if she were about to speak but then she only bit her lip. "We shared thoughts in the time stream. This wouldn't be any different. I just need someone to walk me through the procedure."

Argon appeared sceptical. "You'd be facing a tremendous amount of resistance. When a patient chooses to withdraw this way, they don't want to be brought back."

Foaly flicked his tail. "It's dangerous, Holly."

"He'll listen to me. And even if he doesn't..." Holly shook her head and then looked up to face the others. "I'll take that risk."

For a minute no one spoke. Angeline's voice seemed brittle when she broke the silence. "If you can help Arty... I– Please, please save my son."

"You're not authorized for this sort of procedure," Trouble snapped.

Holly rounded on him. "If you want my badge you can have it, but I've got to try."

Trouble harrumphed. "One of these days that Mud Boy's going to be the death of you, Holly." And then, more softly, "I just hope it's not today."

Argon still looked pale and his hands were trembling as he tapped at his e-pad. "I've sent you the information you need to commence the procedure, but I want to be clear that I'm not in any way authorizing it. I'm not liable for any damages that result from this endeavour."

Holly rolled her eyes. "Understood, doctor. Now can we just get this started?"

Foaly and the facility's staff set about getting the necessary equipment and administering the psychoactive drugs that would assist the procedure. Holly was startled when she heard Butler's gravelly voice. "Holly, be careful in there."

A wry smile twitched her lips. "I'm pretty sure I was around for most of his low points. There shouldn't be _too_ many surprises."

"Take care, fairy girl," Juliet added. "Watch your back."

"Thank you, Holly," Angeline said, very quietly, features pale and drawn.

Holly nodded. "I'll bring him back."

And then Foaly was ready. He pressed a sensor onto her wrist to track her vital signs and the orderlies administered a hypershot. "What was that?" she asked.

"That," Foaly replied, "is the cocktail of drugs that will help you make the mental connection. And this," he said holding up something that looked like a battery attached to two clamps, "is what's going to fuel the procedure." Holly raised an eyebrow as he clamped one end of the device around he arm. "It's warlock magic, similar to what we use to power the time-stop. It's a low-drain procedure so the battery should last for about forty-eight hours, which is longer than a medical warlock can go without needing to–" Foaly shrugged apologetically. "Use the facilities."

Foaly attached the other clamp to Artemis's arm and then beckoned Holly over. "Right, now what you need to do is go in as if you were going to do a magical probe and then just push harder. The drugs should ease you in, but after that you'll have to pull Artemis out of whatever fantasy world he's retreated into."

"Got it."

She took a seat by Artemis's bedside, studying him for a moment. He was still dressed in jeans and that ridiculous T-shirt. She could just imagine his indignation at the thought that he might spend his last moments in that outfit. His too-long legs hung out over the end of the fairy-sized bed. Holly could still remember a time when she could face him eye to eye– or almost at least; it seemed like ages ago now.

Holly took a deep breath. "Here goes," she muttered and then she took his face in her hands and leaned her forehead against his. She closed her eyes and concentrated. Heat spread through her forehead, making her skin tingle. A normal probe would last only a second, but she held the magic there between them so that it buzzed through him and back to her in a sparking loop of magical energy. Her head began to spin but she did as instructed and pushed with her magic, probing deeper into his mind, forcing her way through layers of resistence.

And then all at once she felt as if she were falling, tumbling through a hole in the fabric of the universe. For a moment everything went black and when she opened her eyes, everything had changed.


	12. Memory Lane

**Chapter Twelve: Memory Lane**

Holly found herself in a room with a vine-pattered carpet on the floor. At the far end of the room, sunlight slanted onto the draperies of a four-poster bed and the woman who lay on it. One of her hands drooped over the edge of the bed, white and skeletal. Her face was all angles, cheeks hollowed, eyes sunken deep into their sockets. Strands of her blond hair, now stiff and brittle as straw, lay across her pillow.

It was Angeline Fowl, Holly realized, during her apparent illness earlier this year.

Angeline's eyes sprang open, wide and frightened, as she struggled to draw a rasping breath, hands clawing at the air.

_This_ thought Holly, _this is what drove Artemis to develop the Atlantis Complex._

And then all at once the room with vine carpeting and the skeletal form of Angeline were gone, replaced by the shattered remains of a bistro. Butler's hulking form was sprawled over a trolley of demolished desserts. Blood oozed from a hole in the centre of his chest.

The scene shifted again and Holly found herself standing in Knightsbridge, London, outside of Ice Age Cryogenics. She was staring into a cryo pod that contained the bodyguard's huge form, coated with an inch of ice, and words were slipping unbidden from her lips. "When are you going to learn, Mud Boy? Your schemes have a tendency to get people hurt. Usually the people who care about you."

She couldn't stop the words even as she heard them, nor could she stop herself from being swept up in the tide of his memories, carried along like a cork on the open sea.

And then there was Artemis, draped in a dark cotton suit, looking young – younger – both his eyes still blue. He called up a number on his cell phone but then paused to link the phone to his Powerbook and the recording software that was already up and running on its screen.

He made the call.

"Arty." Holly could hear Angeline's voice, cheerful and slightly out of breath as if she'd run to answer the phone.

"How are you, Mother?"

"I'm fine, Arty, but you sound like you're doing a job interview, as usual. Always so formal. Couldn't you call me Mum or even Angeline? Would that be so terrible?"

"I don't know, Mother. Mum sounds so infantile. I am fourteen now, remember?"

Holly remained there, unable to speak or act as the conversation continued for several minutes. As soon as he'd ended the call, Artemis called up the recording on his computer and opened an audio manipulation software. Holly watched him dismember the conversation with his mother, selecting the words he wanted and reassembling them, creating a chimerical version of his mother's speech. He then smoothed the tones of the jerky, strung-together phrases so that the speech sounded natural.

When he was finished, he routed the message through Fowl manner and to a secondary number, and Holly understood he'd use his own mother's voice to create a fake call. Not a surprise, not really. After all, Artemis had done far worse in his time. But even from her strange, disembodied vantage point, she could see the doubt on his features, the ridges in his brow as he proceeded. He felt guilty.

Finally Holly understood what was going on.

His mother, Butler, this... Artemis had retreated into a collage of past moments, his memories intersecting, melding into a loop that kept his consciousness submerged. He had created for himself his own personal purgatory, forcing himself to relive all the moments that most troubled his conscience. Holly wanted to reach out to him, to draw him close, away from all of this – his mistakes, his regrets – but once more she was tugged along by his thoughts.

When the scene shifted again, Holly found herself standing in a room that was all too familiar. Concrete walls surrounded her. Her cell in Fowl Manor. Well now, this was a place she certainly hadn't missed. No more than two feet away stood Artemis, only a little taller than her and wearing mirrored glasses. He looked like an eagle swooping down on its prey. "Now I know about the hostage fund," he told her.

Again she found herself helpless to stop the words, the same ones she'd spoken six years ago. "What hostage fund?"

"Oh, come now, Captain. Why bother with the charade? You told me about it yourself."

"I– I told you! Ridiculous!"

"Look at your arm." And just as before, when Holly rolled up her sleeve she found a cotton pad taped to the vein. "That's where we administered the sodium pentathol. Commonly known as truth serum. You sang like a bird."

A wave of despair washed over her. She had betrayed the People, shared the Book's secrets. She would be an outcast, a–

Holly shook herself. _This isn't real. It's a only memory. Artemis's memory... and mine._

Her mouth snapped shut before she could speak the lines she had in the past. He was lying and she knew it now. "No you didn't."

Artemis froze. He cleared his throat, a smug smile spreading onto his lips. "Didn't what, Captain?"

"You didn't administer anything. The serum could have killed me. You wouldn't go that far."

Something flickered in his features. "Is that so?" And then the walls of the cell seemed to flicker as did the air around her.

The transition was less jarring this time. She was sitting on the bottom step of the great stairway in Fowl Manor. "I am nothing like John Spiro," Artemis was saying.

And before she could stop herself, Holly shot back with, "Give yourself a few years. You'll get there."

_I didn't mean that_, she wanted to say, but she never got the chance as the scene flickered again. She felt anger well up in herself that he was using her, her words, his memories of her, to flagellate himself. She certainly did not want this, had never wanted this. She'd told him to let these things go.

_You never would take advice, Arty._

Now they were in the arctic and Butler was adjusting a fairy Farshoot rifle. The scope displayed the current target and the crosshairs hovered over Artemis Fowl senior's chest. "Artemis," Butler said. "Are you sure? This is risky."

Artemis nodded.

Butler's finger pulled the trigger. Some fifteen hundred yards away, Artemis Fowl senior's body jerked from the impact, a gush of red staining his shirt.

_Stop this!_

Holly shouted the command into the void, pushing against the tide of resistance. She jostled and shoved until she felt something give. Artemis stood there before her, his eyes blue, his face painfully young. "I shot my father," he said to her. "Butler pulled the trigger, but on my order. I shot him."

"And I shot Julius. We do what we have to."

His brow crinkled. "Shot Julius? When?

"Remember? When Opal tried to get her revenge on us? Remember Munich?"

"Munich..."

His eyes glazed over, and with them, their surroundings. An image of the city danced before her eyes, Artemis and Butler caught in a traffic jam, but then something peculiar happened. The scene shifted just for an instant to another place Holly remembered all too well: the roof of the Temple of Artemis in the abandoned fairy theme park, The Eleven Wonders. She and Artemis were holding on to a rope, waiting to be hauled up through a gap in the ceiling.

Their faces were inches apart.

And then it was over and they were back in the hotel in Munich and Artemis was manipulating the audio recording once more.

_Not this again._ She could feel the tug of his memories, trying to draw her back in. _Oh no you don't, Mud Boy. Two can play at this game._

She concentrated on their first meeting, remembered sending her healing magic out in a general area around Fowl Manor, a sort of area-wide pick-me-up that would shake Angeline Fowl out of her depression.

And then the scene coalesced into a moment she knew was not drawn from her own memories. Angeline Fowl, draped in a bathrobe, her hair wet, standing on the grand stairway of Fowl Manor. She was smiling, healed.

_That's it, Artemis. Remember that. Remember that you did things that were good, that you_ helped _your mother_.

Holly gritted her teeth as a tremor rocked through her, a wrenching feeling that seem to originate at once inside and outside of her, like being crushed and pulled apart at once.

"Don't fight it, Artemis," she hissed. "I'm trying to help you." But the scene was dissolving before her eyes.

For the second time, a curious thing happened, a flitting image, a sensation that lasted only for the blink of an eye. But in that instant it was vivid and clear.

She was standing with Artemis in his mother's bedroom, her hands on either side of his head, pressing her forehead to his. She could feel warmth tingling in her brow where it touched his skin.

And then it was over. They were still in the sickroom, but standing apart. Angeline's skeletal form rested on the canopied bed and the air was thick with the scent of lilies. Artemis dropped a piece of equipment and knelt to retrieve it. "What kind of son am I?" he whispered. "A liar and a thief. All my mother has ever done was love me and try to protected me, and now she may die."

Just as she had in that moment, Holly reached down to pull Artemis to his feet, but this time she did not let him go. Instead, she gripped his arm as she said, "You're not that person anymore, Artemis."

His eyes hovered on the elfin fingers wrapped around his arm. He licked his lips and opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

Another flicker. The security booth of the vault in the Spiro Needle, just outside the secondary door. A red floor plate squeaked beneath Artemis's feet. "Of course!" he said and grabbed Holly, hugging her against him.

Holly's mind raced. She remembered that – the weight-sensitive scale that required both their masses to equal Spiro's. But why would Artemis recall it and those other moments that had flashed by? Standing together on the rope, the magical probe...

The sickroom solidified around them again and as Holly found herself still holding on to Artemis's arm, she realized what the moments had in common. "Artemis," she said softly, squeezing his arm. They were all moments when the two of them had been close. Even amid his guilt, his mind kept returning to those fleeting touches.

Artemis cleared his throat and shook her off. "Nothing has changed," he said. "Nothing at all."

And then fourteen-year-old Artemis with his tired, mismatched eyes was replaced with smug, twelve-year-old Artemis, speaking into a radio transmitter. "So here is my ultimatum. You have thirty minutes to send in the gold, or else I will refuse to release Captain Short. Furthermore, I will not take her with me when I leave the time-field, leaving her to be disintegrated by the bio-bomb."

Holly pushed against the memory until she could force herself into the scene and stood next to Artemis, looking up into his face. "You are _not_ that person anymore," she repeated. "You don't need to do this to yourself."

His blue eyes, no longer hidden behind his mirrored glasses flashed.

Holly was jarred by the suddenness of the transition. Cold, a terrible cold seeped into every pore, sinking into her bones, making her body feel stiff and brittle. She bit her lip to keep her teeth from chattering. Bundled in a parka, Artemis stood on the Siberian snow plane, his mismatched eyes fierce and wild, his breath condensing into white puffs as he spoke. "I know you're behind this Holly Short," he spat. "You have never forgiven me for the kidnapping."

Her heart ached to hear those words again, to see his madness. She moved across the snow field towards him. He held his hands up, palms outward, as if trying to ward her away. "Don't be ridiculous," she said. "I forgave you years ago. You're the one who's never forgiven yourself." The cold wrapped itself around her as she took another step towards him. Every breath was like a lungful of icy water, leaving her shivering.

The cold did not dissipate even as the scene shifted to Fowl Manor and she found herself in the cell again. This time, however, instead of the small, blue-eyed boy who should have been there with her, stood a young man with mismatched eyes, smiling down at her sadly. "If I win," Artemis said quietly, "I'm a prodigy. If I lose, then I'm mad. That's the way history is written." He reached out as if to touch her face but then drew back, his smile wavering. "I suppose we know now which one it is."

She wanted to call out after him, but choked on the words when water, as cold as arctic ice, filled her mouth and throat. The river at the Eleven Wonders spun her around, dragging her towards the whirlpool. Water buffeted her, crushing her chest. Cold. The water in her memory had not been this cold. It seemed to sap all the strength from her limbs. She couldn't move, couldn't struggle against the current as it tore Artemis away from her, far away, leaving her with only the chill darkness.

* * *

**A/N:** Obviously much of the dialogue from this chapter was snitched from the books. If anyone wants to know precisely where something came from, feel free to message me about it.

Also, I'll be travelling at this time next week so I'll likely post the next chapter a day or two earlier than normal.


	13. Take Two

**Chapter Thirteen: Take Two**

Holly's eyelids were leaden, her body like ice. The water rushed around her, smothered her, and she no longer had the strength to fight against it. She felt herself drifting into darkness, filled with regret. She had promised to save him, but he was too far gone, drifting away from her in the current.

She seemed to drift in the darkness for a long while but then warmth returned to her, not in a gradual way, but all at once so that she felt just as she had that time in the abandoned shuttle port when she had saved herself from a magma flare by dousing herself with a tank of coolant; it was the strangest sensation of being frozen and burned simultaneously.

Vitality returned to her limbs. She could move again, think again. Her lungs ached but the water no longer overpowered her. This was not real. Just memories.

With renewed force, Holly called to mind the scene as it had been four years ago, the rush of the river's current, their struggle against it. She called to mind how it had really happened. Artemis was being tugged along in the current but as they were pulled into the funnel of the whirlpool, they were forced down together. She grabbed a hold of him as she had then and they pressed their foreheads together, finding comfort in each other's eyes.

Holly gripped his arms as if her life depended on it.

And then the rushing water was gone. Instead, she was lying in the grass, basking in the sun of southern France on a slope from which she could see the Paradizo Chateau. The breeze carried with it the scent of olives. For a moment, she could almost forget the unpleasant mission ahead, that she'd been about to allow herself to be captured by their enemies – which was rapidly become a running theme in their adventures together. Artemis lay beside her, watching the Chateau with characteristic intensity. She turned and looked at him, smiling. His eyes were blue – though not for much longer.

After a few seconds he noticed her gaze and seemed unsettled by it. "Is there something the matter, Holly?"

She reached out and squeezed his forearm. His eyes flitted to her fingers and then back to her face. "You're doing a good thing, Artemis. I just wanted to say that now in case things get messy later."

"As they do often do." His brow was furrowed.

"That's how life is."

"Perhaps, but the consequences..."

"Artemis, don't–"

But it was too late. The scene had shifted once more. Fowl Manor. Again.

Artemis was standing outside the doors to his home. He reached for the door, but his hand hesitated over the handle. Butler, standing next to him, squeezed his shoulder. Artemis's Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed hard and opened to door. He walked into the grand hall just as his parents raced down the stairs as if the manor were on fire. "Arty," sobbed his mother as she gathered him in her arms. "My little Arty."

"Arty," chorused his father, as he wrapped his arms around his son and his wife, eyes glistening. "We were worried we'd never see you again, that you were–"

"I'm fine," Artemis assured, his voice rough.

His father drew back a moment to look at him. "You look just like I remember," he said with wonder. "Just like you did three years ago. You haven't grown an inch, have you?"

Artemis looked up into his father's eyes, and when he spoke Holly could hear it, the layered tones of the _mesmer_, like chimes, sweetening every word. "Don't worry about it, Father. That doesn't matter now."

A curiously blank look appeared on his father's face. "No, it doesn't matter. You're safe, that's all that's important."

"But where have you been, Arty?" wailed Angeline. "We've been so worried."

"I know, Mother," Artemis said and then he caught her eye and he had her too. "But it's over now. You need never think about that again. Let it go."

Angeline smiled. "You're right, Arty. The past is over and done with. We're a family again."

As his parents stood in the grand hall, looking slightly dazed, but smiling happily, Holly forced herself forward until she there with them. "Artemis, stop this," she said.

He turned, seeming unsurprised to see her there. "You can just let things go, Holly? Is that right? That's what you told me, isn't it?"

She shook her head, reaching out for him. "I never said it was easy, but–"

He jerked away. "You know what this cost my family, the suffering my absence inflicted on them for three years, the further suffering caused by my magical tampering. And nothing has changed."

Her vision shifted again and she saw Artemis, dishevelled and slightly singed, hanging by the safety harness in a half-destroyed escape pod. A phone was pressed to his ear.

"– people are important too," Angeline was saying. "How's Holly?" It was jarring when Holly realized she was standing outside herself, for here she was, but she could see herself there, curled around the leg of a bench, sound asleep as she'd been during that mission. Her uniform was singed and torn, and blood dribbled from one of her ears with no spark of magic to heal it.

"She's... em... fine," Artemis lied. "A little tired from the journey, but totally in control of the situation. I admire her, Mother, really I do. The way she handles whatever life throws at her and never gives up."

Holly was surprised by how touched she was to hear him say it. Artemis was normally as reserved with his praise as Orion was generous. Held up against the hollowness of Orion's florid speeches, Artemis's words meant all the more to her.

Angeline gasped. "Well, Artemis Fowl the Second, that is about the longest non-scientific speech I have ever heard you make. Holly Short is lucky to have a friend like you."

Artemis assumed a crestfallen air. "No, she isn't. No one is lucky to know me. I can't help anyone. I can't even help myself."

Holly felt despair welling up in her – no, not in her, but around her, Artemis's own despair coiling around her like thorny vines. She gritted her teeth and shook herself free. Artemis was right about one thing: she was not about to give up.

"You _can_ help yourself," she snarled, surging forward, grabbing at him before he could jerk away from her.

The memory of Angeline's voice spoke again. "This is your last solo mission, Arty. You promised me. I just have to save the world, you said, then I can spend more time with the twins."

"I remember," Artemis murmured, his eyes distant, glazed over. Holly tugged at his arm, trying to draw him back to himself. His eyes refocused on her. "I break all my promises. But then you know that already, don't you, Holly?"

He tried to pull away, but instead she drew him closer and cradled his face in her hands just as she'd been wanting to do all these months since he'd become ill. "You don't have to do this, Artemis," she said, looking into those mismatched eyes, the twin of her own.

He shifted his eyes away. "My parents, the twins, they've all suffered on account of me. Even you..." His gaze flitted to her face for a moment. He licked his lips, hesitated and then shook his head. "Everyone would be better off without my presence."

Holly snorted. "You can't really believe that. Your parents love you, even if they don't understand everything that's happened, even if you've hurt them." He tried to pull away from her again, but she refused to let him go, afraid that if he broke away now, it would be for the last time. She leaned in close, pressing her forehead to his, feeling the warmth of his skin against hers. "And I can't do without you, remember?"

"No," he snapped. "I don't remember."

She smiled. "I think maybe you do." The one memory he hadn't called up, the one moment when they'd been very close indeed. He seemed almost to be skirting the memory of that kiss.

"That doesn't matter now, not after everything..."

Holly felt inexplicably calm in that moment. Somehow, she knew what to do. Still holding his face in her hands, she drew back and waited for him to look at her. When he met her eyes, she pushed against the barrier of memory, moulding it into what she wanted to show him.

They were flying through the darkness, just above the grasping waves of the sea. Artemis's head lolled back as he lay in her arms unconscious. Through the mic in her helmet she could hear Foaly's voice. "Do you ever think you might like to go to work and then just come home? No drama?"

Holly's eyes searched the roiling sea, but her arms tightened around Artemis's sleeping form. "No," she said. "I never think that."

He had not heard her then, not woken up until they'd reached Fowl Manor, but this time, when she looked down, Holly was unsurprised to find Artemis staring up at her, searching her features. She smiled at him.

Holly was not quite ready for what happened next. She went from being in midair to sitting on the hood of a car, her mind swirling faster than the waters of the Eleven Wonders. Artemis was peering at her, a worried expression on his startlingly bristly face. And words were pouring from her mouth before she even realized she was speaking. "I don't know what's happening to me. We're not even the same species. And when we go back, we will be ourselves again. Listen to me. Babbling. The LEP's first female captain. That time stream has turned me into what you could call a teenager again." And she felt it, as overwhelming as she had in that moment, all the worry, the abashment, and... and the hope. "What if I'm stuck like this? That wouldn't be so bad, would it?"

Holly tried to focus her thoughts. This was not real. It was a dream, a memory. She was here to help him, to bring him back to himself. She focussed on Artemis's face as he spoke. This time she was ready for the words. "It wasn't you, Holly."

He looked so pained and in her giddy, adolescent state she almost laughed. "I know." His brow creased. "I know about your stolen magic and trying to heal your mother. I'll explain later," she added before he could ask. "When things have calmed down a little."

"I expected you to be angry at the very least."

"I was. I got over it." And it was true. She had let things go, and now he had to as well, for his own good.

_Come on, Artemis. Say something._

For several moments he was silent. She could almost see theories being born and discarded behind his mismatched eyes. Finally, his attention turned back to her and she was confused when he spoke. "Not so bad."

"Hmm?"

"Your question. Would it be so bad if you had to stay this way? The answer is no, not so bad."

Her breath caught in her throat. Wasn't that, after all, the answer she had hoped for in that moment?

A smile broke onto her face and, heart fluttering like any adolescent's might, Holly leaned in and kissed him. At that moment nothing seemed to matter except that he was safe and that they were together.

**ooo**

When Holly opened her eyes again, she was no longer on the hood of the car. In fact she was no longer anywhere in particular, but she was not alone. She could feel Artemis there with her, holding her hand, squeezing it tightly in his, but also all around her, the touch of his mind against hers, just as it had been the first time they had travelled through the time stream. Turning to look into his face, she couldn't help but smile. His features were calm now and his eyes were the familiar mismatched set she'd gotten so used to.

"I see," Artemis said. "We're not really in the time stream, are we?"

"No," Holly said. "We're not."

"We're... inside my mind. You came for me."

"Of course I did. You didn't think I'd just let you get away with a stunt like this?"

Thoughts and memories danced around her, the jagged edges of his mind that she knew so well. She could see it all now, his guilt at Angeline's illness, the twins' kidnapping, and lying to her about infecting his mother. She could touch the very thoughts that had troubled him when they'd sat together on the hood of that car, when he'd had that pained look on his face: _If you answer this question, it will be the worst thing you have ever done._

There in the closeness of his mind, his thoughts wrapped around her like an itchy sweater, she squeezed his hand and looked up into his mismatched eyes. "Are you ready to come back, Artemis?"

For a long moment he simply looked at her. Then he squeezed her hand in return and smiled. "Yes. I'm ready."

**ooo**

Holly's eyes sprang open.

There was a moment of disorientation. Everything seemed so bright, so noisy. Her body felt enormously heavy, as if tied down by weights. There was an ache in her skull, right between her eyes.

After a moment, she realized she was lying in a hospital bed. Tara. She must still be in Tara. Something was gripping her arm, not the clamp Foaly has fastened on, but something cool and scaly. She turned her head to see her friend No 1, the demon warlock, standing between her bed and another one to his right. "No1?" she murmured, her throat scratchy.

He smiled brightly. "Welcome back to the land of the living." And then, brow scrunching up into a mass of grey scales, "Well it's Ireland technically, but..."

His voice was drowned out by a sudden wail, all too familiar to Holly. "Arty!" From the corner of her eye she glimpsed Angeline spring forward towards the other bed.

"What are you doing here, No1?" Holly rasped.

"I came to help the medical warlocks. You were getting pretty weak for a while so I gave you a boost."

Holly nodded, remembering the cold and weakness she'd experienced and the sudden burst of energy. "Thank you. I wouldn't have gotten through without your help. But..." Holly frowned. "You were in Haven, weren't you? That's hours away. How long was I out?"

Foaly clopped forward to answer. "Three years."

Holly's jaw dropped.

"Sorry. Three days. My mistake," Foaly said with a whinny.

"I swear to Frond, Foaly, if my head didn't ache so much..." She trailed off as she heard Artemis's voice – barely more than a croak as he assured his mother that he was fine.

There was a flurry of activity around them as several more people poured into the room – staff doctors, Butler, Juliet, Doctor Argon himself. Ignoring the bustle, Holly turned her head to peer towards the hospital bed a few feet away. Through the crowd of people packed into the room, she caught a pair of mismatched eyes and smiled.

* * *

**A/N:** Someone asked in a review about the following line and whether it should read "mad" instead of "crazy":

"If I win. I'm a prodigy. If I lose, then I'm crazy. That's the way history is written."

I was working off the sadly adulterated North American edition of the books but I checked against the audio version which, thankfully, is based off the UK edition. "Mad" is indeed what's in the UK version; it looks like "crazy" was another of those ridiculous alterations by the US publisher. I plan to edit the passage in the previous chapter to go with the UK text.


	14. Happy Endings

**Chapter Fourteen: Happy Endings**

Doctor Argon had not been satisfied that his star patient was himself again until Artemis not only pronounced the number four without hesitation, but began reciting its exponentiation aloud. He'd reached 4,194,304 before Argon had stopped him.

"Well, Mud Boy," Foaly was telling Artemis, "Doctor Argon's finally given you a clean bill of health. Not that he looked too happy about it."

Artemis glowered. "He certainly performed enough tests to confirm it. Do you have any idea how many times I've been electrocuted in the past hour?"

Foaly flicked his tail. "So the white knight's gone for good then. I think I might actually miss him, you know."

"Yes. No more 'noble beast' – though if you were becoming fond of the nickname, Foaly, I'd be glad to adopt it."

Holly jumped in before Foaly could reply. "There's a shuttle waiting for you, Artemis. Butler, Juliet, and your mother are already aboard and the pilot will drop you off at Fowl Manor. You're free to go."

He smiled his vampire smile. "Oh? The commander didn't find some way to press charges for this latest incident?"

Holly winced. "I think Trouble decided he'd rather be rid of you than have you in Haven any longer."

Artemis's smile faltered. "I can imagine he would," he said quietly, his eyes on Holly.

"You might be interested to know," Foaly began, "that we got your three old friends. Spiro, Kong, and Kronski are all being wiped and relocated. That'll be the last we hear from them."

"That's welcome news," Artemis said with a nod. "And Opal?"

Holly rolled her eyes. "She slipped off again."

"In that case, please pass on my thanks to the commander for his characteristically fine work."

That, Holly decided, did not merit a reply so she turned instead to Foaly. "Could you go on ahead and let everyone know that Artemis is finally cleared?"

"Right, I forgot. I'm not the LEP technical expert anymore. I got a promotion to pony express."

Holly raised her eyebrows. "Please, Foaly?"

He grumbled a few things under his breath but clopped off leaving them alone in the examination room.

For a minute neither of them spoke. Finally, Holly sighed and sat down on to one of the hospital beds. "I can't believe we were out for three days."

"Yes," Artemis agreed. "It seemed only a matter of hours." He sat down next to her, a slight smile tugging at his lips as he went on. "You do, of course, realize what day it is."

"Hmm?"

"It's been three days since the solstice. It's Christmas Eve, Holly. The anniversary of the day we–" He hesitated. "Met."

She smiled wanly. "You'll be with your family for the holidays after all."

"My parents will be overjoyed, I imagine."

She reached out to squeeze his arm. "You can start with a clean slate now."

He nodded, but he didn't look particularly happy. If truth be told, neither did she. "I guess," she began after an uncomfortable moment of silence, "I'd gotten used to seeing you every day."

"Will you miss him?"

Confused, Holly looked up. "Who?"

"Orion. Will you miss him now that you've lost your admirer?"

Holly sniffed. "No. I much prefer having you in one piece. Besides," she said slyly, "I don't think I've actually lost an admirer."

Artemis cleared his throat and reached out to adjust his tie – only too late realizing that he was still in the T-shirt and jeans his mother had brought him. "Of course you're right." He did not meet her eyes, and his face was unusually flushed as he spoke. "Orion was correct. We do share... feelings... for you. However, I would choose to express them in a more staid manner."

"Artemis... Would you have... said anything if it weren't for Orion?"

He looked down at her and shook his head. "After what happened during our romp through the past, I didn't wish to further damage our relationship. So no, not unless I had some indication that you would reciprocate." He shrugged. "And I had no reason to. Certainly when I saw you in Siberia, it wasn't difficult to make the link between your new hair style and your tendency to use Commander Kelp's first name. Not to mention Foaly's tidbit about the date." Holly winced inwardly but Artemis kept on as if he'd rehearsed the entire speech – which was not at all impossible given that he'd had the past few hours to think on it. "In addition, I suppose I hadn't fully acknowledged the extent of my emotional attachment at the time. I qualified it as adolescent confusion and did my utmost to ignore it, which, in retrospect, would only have accelerated the development of the Atlantis Complex."

Holly smiled at his awkwardness, his formality. He had always stumbled through personal admissions; it was how she knew he was sincere. "It's not like that."

"What was that?"

"With Trouble. He – I think he asked me out _because_ I grew my hair out. But I didn't change my hair because of him."

"Oh?" Artemis said, eyebrows raised. "Then why?"

She looked away from him, fingers absently pushing back a lock of hair. "I just... thought it would be a nice change."

"I see."

Crossing her arms, she stared up at him. "Why did you start working out with Butler? After all these years?"

"I'd always meant to. It just seemed sensible," he said cooly, but she could hardly miss the flush in his pale cheeks.

"I see." Holly glanced over her shoulder at the sound of footsteps just beyond the door. "I suppose you have to go. I'll come see you – as soon as I can."

"I would like that," he said quietly. "Very much." The silence seemed to suck the air from her lungs, the voice from throat. She had grown so used to having him there in Haven. Every day. Granted, it had been Orion she'd found at the clinic nearly as often as Artemis, but even so, she knew she would miss him terribly. He was still here and already she missed him.

"Holly." He shifted slightly so that he could face her.

"Hmm?" Turning, she glanced up at him. He looked so very serious.

"I realize that my relative youth may give you pause, so I would like to assure you that while according to Irish law seventeen is the age of consent, fifteen is considered old enough–"

"For this," she finished, and then reached up and kissed him.

She was not an adolescent this time, but she felt every bit as giddy as her lips tingled and a shiver of delight ran down her spine. Artemis's fingers brushed through her hair and she smiled against his lips.

Artemis was flushed but smiling – a little foolishly – as he said. "I was about to explain about what's considered allowable for those between fifteen and seventeen, but I see it's unnecessary."

"I– uh – looked it up."

"You looked it up?" he repeated, bemused.

She couldn't keep from smiling, even as she punched him in the arm. "Don't look so pleased with yourself. Especially when you're still wearing that shirt."

He glanced down at the cartoon character on his chest and shrugged, smiling his vampire smile. "My mother did imply it would help me win popularity with girls."

Holly winced. "I doubt I'm quite what she had in mind."

"Regardless, you are what _I_ had in mind."

"Careful," Holly said, smiling in spite of herself, "or I'll start to think you've relapsed and I'm talking to Orion again."

Artemis straightened. "I like to think I've retained some of his more admirable qualities." "Just promise, Arty, no sonnets."

He chuckled quietly and nodded his assent. "Very well, Holly. No sonnets."

"No haikus either."

"You have my word." She found she was squeezing his fingers in hers, reluctant to let go. Artemis seemed to sense her reluctance –or perhaps he simply shared it – for he squeezed her hand in return as he said, "I'll call when things have settled down at the manor."

"I need to read the report about Opal but I'll email you once I get the full story about what happened while we were out."

"I'd appreciate that."

With a sigh, Holly hopped down from her perch. "We should get going. Your family's waiting."

He got to his feet and followed her towards the door. Her hand hesitated over the open button. "Artemis, that story you were telling me about earlier – the Dream of Aengus. What happened in the end?"

"In short, Aengus fell so ill that his family eventually intervened to try to cure him. They found the woman he'd seen in his dreams. Her kinsmen were not agreeable to the match but after some conflict and a trick on Aengus's part, he finally found her and they were married."

"A happy ending then," Holly said, looking up at him.

"Does that meet with your approval?"

"Yes," she said, smiling. "It does."

Still smiling, Holly reached for the door's open button, and together they walked to the shuttle bay, looking far happier than they had any right to be.

**The End**


End file.
